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CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL
EXPERIENCE
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
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CHRISTIAN LIFE
A NORMAL EXPERIENCE
A STUDY IN THE REAL-
ITY AND GROWTH OF
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE
W. D. WEATHERFORD, Ph.D.
ASSOCIATION PRESS
New York: 347 Madison Avenue
1919
/
Copyright, 1916
BY
Smith & Lamar
PREFACE.
The ready interest in and response to the little volume,
"Introducing Men to Christ/' far exceeded the highest hopes
of any one. So far as can be ascertained, more than fifteen
thousand students have followed its outline of studies; and
it is believed that the faith of some has been strengthened
and that many have been encouraged to undertake personal
work.
There has come a rather widespread demand for some
volume written along the same general lines as the former
volume, but more thorough and comprehensive. This, it has
been thought, could be used with more mature workers and
would not in any sense take the place of "Introducing Men
to Christ," which it is hoped will still find large use with
underclassmen.
We have taken the liberty to follow parts of the general
outline of the former volume and in one case to incorporate
one chapter almost complete. This volume, however, is a
completely new statement, made much more thorough and
treated in greater fullness.
The attempt has been to show the normality of Chris-
tian experience; to indicate clearly how that experience
grows and how it may become real in any life. There is a
definite attempt also to set forth the superior claims of
Christianity as over against the non-Christian religions and
also those modern substitutes for Christianity which are so
numerous at the present hour. The whole has been care-
fully tested by experience with thousands of men in reli-
gious work during recent years. It is hoped, therefore, that
this may prove a laboratory book on Christian experience.
6 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
We are indebted to entirely too many friends and books
to attempt to enumerate all. Whenever possible, we have
tried to give credit for all quotations. We can only hope
that this little volume will render as great a service as its
forerunner has already seemed to do.
W. D. Weatherford.
Nashville, Tennessee, April, 1916.
CONTENTS.
FAGE.
Preface 5
STUDY I. The Meaning of Christian Life 11-25
I. The Intellectual Element in Religion 12
11. Emotionalism as Religion 14
III. Altruism as Religion 16
IV. Religion as Ritualism 18
V. Religion as Relationship 20
VI. Religion as Relationship (Continued) 2.'2
VIL Christian Life, Both Individual and Social 24
STUDY II. Entrance and Growth in Christian Life 27-41
I. Removing Barriers 28
II. God's Attitude of Approval 30
III. The Law of Expression 32
IV. The Meaning of Faith 34
V. The Meaning of Faith (Continued) 36
VI. The Law of Association 38
VIL The Law of Service 40
STUDY III. Personal Results of Christian Experience 43-57
I. What Is Conversion ? , 44
XL What Is Conversion ? (Continued) 46
III. Unification of Personality 48
IV. A Sense of Loyalty 50
V. To What Shall We Be Loyal? 52
VL The Revaluation of the Self 54
VII. Enthusiasm for Humanity 56
STUDY IV. The Message of the Non-Christian Religions. 59-73
I. The God of the Non-Christian Religions 60
II. The God of the Non-Christian Religions (Continued) . (i2
III. Valuation of Man in the Non-Christian Religions 64
IV. Conception of Sin in the Non-Christian Religions 66
V. Standards of Morality in Non-Christian Religions 68
VI. Conception of Salvation in Non-Christian Religions... 70
VII. Do the Non-Christian Religions Satisfy? 72
(7)
8 CONTENTS.
PAGK.
STUDY V. Modern Substitutes for Christianity 75-89
I. Theosophy 76
II. Christian Science 78
III. Pessimism 80
IV. Positivism, the Religion of Humanity 82
V. Theism, a Christless Christianity 84
VI. Eclecticism 86
VII. The Ethical Culture Movement 88
STUDY VI. A Personal God 91-105
I. Modern Scholarship and a Personal God 92
II. Modern Scholarship and a Personal God (Continued) . 94
III. The Character of God 96
IV. The Meaning of God to Daily Life 98
V. Can God Speak to Men? 100
VI. Conditions of Knowing God 102
VII. What Is the Bible? 104
STUDY VII. Christ the Supreme Revelation of God 107-121
I. The Manhood of Christ 108
II. Christ's Perfect Moral Standards no
III. Christ the Forgiver of Sin 112
IV. Christ the Revealer of God 114
V. Meeting the Needs of Men 116
VI. The Meaning of Christ's Consciousness 118
VII. Is the Incarnation Idea Unreasonable ? 120
STUDY VIII. Man and His Relationships 123-137
I. The Nature of Man 124
II. Growth of Moral Life 126
III. Selfishness as Sin 128
IV. The Growth and Meaning of Sin 130
V. The Sacredness of Man 132
VL The Destiny of Man 134
VII. Can We Accept the Idea of the Permanence of Per-
sonality? 136
STUDY IX. Can the Modern Man Pray? I39-I53
I. The Universality of Prayer 140
II. Difficulties in Answer to Prayer 142
III. Do We Need to Pray to a Good God ? 144
IV. Prayer Answered through Suggestion 146
V. Negative Conditions of Prayer 148
CONTENTS. g
PAGE.
VI. Positive Conditions for Prayer 150
VII. Prayer a Working Force 152
STUDY X. The Reality of Religion 155-169
I. Religion as tlie Projection of Our Own Desires 156
II. The Origin of Religion 158
III. The Minimum of Belief 160
IV. The Attitude of the Truth Seeker 162
V. The Will to Believe 164
VL Hindrances to Reality 166
VII. Laws of Growing Reality 168
STUDY XL Sharing the Christian Message 171-185
I. The Meaning of Testimony 172
II. The Test of the Reality of an Experience 174
III. The Nature of Our Testimony 176
IV. Life as Religious Testimony 178
V. Lack of Experience and Ability to Express an Experi-
ence 180
VI. We Shrink from All Personal Conversation 182
VII. Testimony and the Needs of Men 184
STUDY XII. Testimony and the Extension of the King-
dom 187-201
I. Christ's Method of Extending the Kingdom 188
11. Many Can Be Reached Only Through Personal Testi-
mony 190
HI. Men Are Waiting for Our Testimony 192
IV. Simple Testimony Effective 194
V. How to Help Those in Doubt 196
VI. How to Help Those in Doubt (Continued) 198
VII. Arousing the Indifferent 200
Bibliography 203-206
STUDY I.
The Meaning of Christian Life.
12 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY I. THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.
**Be not wise in thine own eyes." (Prov. iii. 7.)
"My soul, if thou wilt receive my words,
And lay up my commandments with thee;
So as to incline thine ear unto wisdom,
And apply thy heart to understanding;
Yea, if thou cry after discernment.
And lift up thy voice for understanding;
If thou seek her as silver,
And search for her as for hid treasures :
Then shalt thou understand the fear of Jehovah,
And find the knowledge of God.
For Jehovah giveth wisdom;
Out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding."
(Prov. ii. 1-6.)
*Tn that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes : even
so. Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight." (Luke x. 21.)
PART I. THE INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT IN RELIGION.
Perhaps the greatest need of our time is that we shall
get a clearer conception of the real meaning of Christian
life. There is much confusion here, and not a few people
are taking one element of Christian life to be the whole of
the Christian experience. Naturally a one-sided character
is developed as the result ; or, what is more serious, this one-
sided Christianity fails to make any appeal whatever to
thoughtful people.
The first one-sided conception of religion is that of intel-
lectualism. This is perhaps traceable to Greek philosophy.
The Greek sophists set aside all tradition and all absolute
standards of truth and goodness, holding that the individual
must be the final authority as to what was good for him.
Socrates replied to this by saying that men were not to be
bound by mere traditional standards, but that they must
think through the facts of human conduct and hence find
the fundamental of moral obligation. To Socrates virtue
and knowledge were identical, and to know the truth was
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 13
to become virtuous. To live a life guided by reason was,
therefore, to Socrates the supreme happiness.
Influenced by Greek philosophy, men have often defined
Christianity as a system of thought; and certainly Chris-
tianity is a system of thought. But to accept that system as
true does not constitute one a Christian. The fundamental
weakness in Socrates's theory of the "good" lay in the dis-
crepancy between thought and action. Most men know well
enough what is right, but many men fail to act on this in-
tellectual knowledge. To know truth is fundamental, but
not all-sufficient. Christian life has a creed, but it is not a
creed. The Christian man will base his experience on the
conviction of certain fundamental truths, but the intellectual
assent to those truths will never by itself make one a Chris-
tian.
Some students are waiting to get all their intellectual
problems settled before they consciously give themselves
over to Christian living; and others, equally mistaken, sup-
pose that because they have no particular intellectual diffi-
culties with the Christian system of thought, conclude,
therefore, that they have met the whole conditions of Chris-
tian life. But both are mistaken. "To inform the mind is
one thing ; to enrich the soul is quite another thing."^
The Pharisees were most scrupulous about their intellec-
tual conceptions and prided themselves on their thorough
knowledge of the law. But Christ bluntly told them that it
was not sufficient : "Ye search the scriptures imagining you
possess eternal life in their pages — ^and they do testify to
me — ^but you refuse to come to me for life."^
It is not a matter of indifference what one believes, as
some seem to think. It is not enough just to do the best
you know — that is good so far as it goes — but you must also
be striving to know the best. No man ever yet built a cor-
rect life on a false conception. But we must not fall into
the other mistake of supposing that thinking correctly will
of itself make our conduct and character right. Reason as
a final standard is not sufficient, because man is more than
a rational being. Religious intellectualism is not Christian
experience.
^Brumbaugh, 'The Alaking of a Teacher/' page 5.
^John V. 39-44. From Moffatt's translation.
14
CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY I. THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.
"Now as they went on their way, he entered into a certain village :
and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.
And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at the Lord's feet,
and heard his word. But Martha was' cumbered about much serv-
ing; and she came up to him, and said. Lord, dost thou not care
that my sister didst leave me to serve alone? bid her therefore that
she help me. But the Lord answered and said unto her, Martha,
Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things : but one
thing is needful: for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall
not be taken away from her." (Luke x. 38-42.)
PART IL EMOTIONALISM AS RELIGION.
Another misconception of Christian life is that it con-
sists in an ecstatic feeling of emotion. In many of the older
types of revivals the most prominent manifestation of reli-
gious experience was that of a violent emotionalism ex-
pressed in tears, groanings, and shouting; and even in the
quieter and more decorous congregations deep emotion was
considered the necessary concomitant of religious experi-
ence. Not a few students are still expecting such an up-
heaval of feelings to warn them that a change of life has
taken place. Professor Coe thinks that the degree of emo-
tionalism expressed at conversion in any group of people
will depend on two things : First, on the amount of expec-
tancy for such experience for which they have been taught
to look, and, secondly, on the temperament of the individual
persons. In those denominations where emotional excite-
ment is supposed to be the sign and seal of conversion all
the conditions favorable to producing such upheavals are
regularly used."^
We ought not allow ourselves to be misled here. There
can be no personal relationship without an emotional ele-
ment. It would be foolish for one to suppose that he could
love his mother without some emotion. Emotion is a normal
and a necessary part of personal life and must not be dis-
counted. To deny its rightful place is equally as foolish as
'Coe, "The Spiritual Life," page in.
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 15
to deny that all religion must have an intellectual back-
ground. Without thought content religion becomes super-
stition; without emotion it becomes a lifeless and impotent
theory. The twofold danger of our day is that the more
cultured will set emotion aside as something to be discounted
and that the ignorant will consider it the full content of re-
ligion.
Hegel said : "The true nerve [of feeling] is the genuine
thought, and only when the thought is true can the feeling
be of a genuine kind." And Eucken adds that when feeling
"attempts to weave a content out of itself in order to lead
man beyond the mere human province to a relationship with
the divine, it degenerates of necessity to the level of eccen-
tricity and fancy. "^ "The function of feeling in the total
experience," says Ames, "may be stated as that of a sign of
the value of the activity in which the organism is engaged."^
There is no passage in the Bible, so far as I am aware,
which prescribes the kind of feeling one must have in order
to be religious. Hence those persons who say that they can-
not be religious because they do not feel like it are certainly
mistaken in this conception of the meaning of religion. If
we have been wrong and want to be right, we may turn our
faces toward God and give our lives to him regardless of
whether we have any feeling about it or not. It is likely
that the feeling will come later ; for, according to functional
psychology, all feeling is dependent upon and follows action.
We first act, then we have the glow of emotion because we
acted. Feeling is not religion; it is the consequence of right
relationship, which is religion. Not until we have given
ourselves to religious life have we a right to expect religious
emotion.
^Eucken, "The Truth of Religion," page 81.
*Ames, "Psychology of Religious Experience," page 328.
l6 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY I. THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.
"And he came forth and saw a great multitude, and he had com-
passion on them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd:
and he began to teach them many things. And when the day was now
far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said. The place is desert,
and the day is now far spent : send them away, that they may go into
the country and villages round about, and buy themselves somewhat
to eat. But he answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat.
And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred penny-
worth of bread, and give them to eat?" (Mark vi. 34-37.)
"And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said unto him, One
thing thou lackest: go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, follow me."
(Mark x, 21.)
PART III. ALTRUISM AS RELIGION.
One of the most prevalent misconceptions of our day is
that religion consists in doing good deeds. Men glibly quote
St. James about "caring for the widows and orphans in their
trouble" as the essence of pure religion. Social service has
come to be such a magic phrase with us that many men
have supposed that it is a dynamic for life within itself and
a "cure-all" for personal and social evils.
One would not want to underestimate the value of social
service. One would not dare belittle the altruistic impulses.
But the doing of good deeds is hardly sufficient. It may
become a fad and have very little of spiritual dynamic be-
hind It. But deeper than this is the fact that altruism does
not spring out of nothing. It has an origin and a cause. It
goes back to something deeper than itself : the appreciation
of the value and sacredness of human personality. Now,
this appreciation of the sacredness of personality is of the
very essence of Christ's message of life, and out of that
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. ij
message have sprung all the world's philanthropic move-
ments. One who has traveled the world knows well that the
fact of social service is known only in countries where the
message of the Bible has been made known.
Social service is not, therefore, religion; it is the expres-
sion of religion. It is the normal and natural outgrowth
of all true Christian experience. The man who thinks he
is religious but has no interest in his fellow men is surely
mistaken, and just as surely is that other man mistaken who
thinks his interest in men has not sprung from a religious
impulse. He may not have consciously given himself over
to the Christian life, but his conception of the value of hu-
manity, which is the mainspring of his service program, is
purely and specifically Christian.
The danger of past religious periods has been that re-
ligion would be too subjective, spending itself on mere in-
tellectual and emotional states; but the chief danger of our
age is that religion shall become too objective, spending it-
self in outward deeds without giving sufficient attention to
the enriching of the inner personal experience, from which
all good deeds must flow.
2
i8 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY I. THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.
"Hear the word of Jehovah, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto
the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. What unto me is the
multitude of your sacrifices? saith Jehovah: I have had enough of
the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight
not in the blood of bullocks, or lambs, or of he-goats. When ye
come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to
trample my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an
abomination unto me ; new moon and sabbath, the calling of assem-
blies, — I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your
new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a
trouble unto me; I am weary of bearing them. And when you
spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you ; yea, when
ye make many prayers, I will not hear : your hands are full of blood.
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from
before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice,
relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."
(Isa. i, 10-17.)
"For thou delightest not in sacrifice ; else would I give it :
Thou hast no pleasure in burnt offering." (Ps. li. 16.)
"And in his teaching he said, Beware of the scribes, who desire
to walk in long robes, and to have salutations in the market places,
and chief seats in the synagogues, and chief places at feasts : they
that devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers;
these shall receive greater condemnation." (Mark xii. 38-40.)
PART IV. RELIGION AS RITUALISM.
Once more we must set aside a false conception in the
form of ritualism, which is but an aspect of ecclesiasticism.
Perhaps this is not so prevalent a misconception as in past
times; but there are still those who think that joining the
Church, attending its services, partaking of its sacraments,
the reading of the Bible, the saying of prayers, constitute
the whole of religion. To them religion is loyalty to an in-
stitution ; it is a beautiful form, a well-appointed service, a
careful performance of set practices. The danger of all
religion and of all worship is that it shall become dead and
formalistic. Indeed, this is the archenemy of all life; but
perhaps it is a more serious problem in religion than in any
other phase of life.
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.
19
The evil of all evils to be dreaded is that our religion
shall become institutionalized and lose its vital content.
Formalism was the chief sin of Isaiah's day, which, he tells
the people, induces religious stupidity and finally incapacity
to see truth. The danger of our loyalty to an institution is
that we forget that for which the institution stands. The
great danger of any set ritual is that it shall come to take
the place of real fellowship with God. It is apt to leave the
life without any moral content. "When ye make many
prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood."
We must not go to the opposite extreme, however, and
suppose that there is no need for loyalty to the Church or
order in worship. Human life seems to be dependent to a
large extent on symbols. We are not, for the most part,
able to grasp abstract truth. Truth must become incarnated
or put into symbols. This the Church as an institution,
with its ritual of worship, helps to do and thus is a means
to strengthen the reality of religion. There is no possible
objection to using symbols, provided we know always that
they are symbols and not realities. We must always be able
to break through the form and get to the reality. We must
pierce the crust of organization and ritual and find the real-
ity of God.
If organizations, times, seasons, and forms help us to find
God, let us have them; but not for the sake of the institu-
tions or seasons, but for the sake of finding life. God may
be more vivid to us in the Church service, but he is just as
real and as active in everyday life. We must not shut him
up to consecrated places nor expect to see him only in hours
of ritual performances. He is greater than any form, any
sanctuary, or any sacred season or creed. We must find
Him.
20 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY I. THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.
"Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before
the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with
calves a year old? will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams,
or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for
■my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He
hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah
require of thee, but to do justly, to love kindness, and to walk hum-
bly with thy God?" (Mic. vi. 6-8.)
"And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only
true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." (John
xvii. 3.)
"No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not
what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things
that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you." (John
XV. IS.)
PART V. RELIGION AS RELATIONSHIP.
If religion is not intellectualism, not emotionalism, not
altruism, not ritualism, then what is it? Micah says it is
right relationship to our fellov^ men — doing justice and
loving kindness — ^and fellowship with God.
If we were trying to define religion in generic terms, we
would say that it was man's consciousness of relationship to
a higher but kindred power, with whom he desired to live on
terms of friendliness. It is the expression of man's desire
to have fellowship with the kindred power outside himself.
The unifying element in all religions is this God-conscious-
ness. The interpretation of this consciousness by peoples of
varying temperament, culture, and environment has given
rise to very divergent forms of religious belief. But the
fact of universal religious consciousness makes us certain
that there is central truth here. This fact of consciousness
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 21
of a higher kindred power — religion — Eucken says, is *'the
strongest power within the world/'
"Whatever appears in life as heroism," says Eucken,
*'roots itself ultimately in religion. Nothing can inspire man
in the depth of his soul, nothing can win his entire self-
surrender, unless it has linked itself to his religion or has
become a kind of religion in itself. Indeed, all belief of
humanity and of the individual seems inseparable from a
belief in the indwelling of a divine in human nature, of the
loving presence of an eternal and spiritual energy in the
deeds of man."^
To give another generic definition of religion: It is the
response of man to this eternal energy within his soul and
the ordering of his life in accordance with that response.
This response will be largely conditioned by the conception
any man has of God; but that God deals directly with every
man and that every man's soul responds to this influence
from God seems to be a fact well verified by the study of
anthropology and comparative religions.
Even the lowest forms of religion, therefore, seem to be
a matter of relationship, a response of human souls to divine
influence.
^Eucken, "The Truth of Religion," page 4.
22 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY I. THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every
branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away: and every
branch that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit.
Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto
you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye
abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches : He that abideth in
me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me
ye can do nothing." (John xv. 1-5.)
PART VI. RELIGION AS RELATIONSHIP.
(Continued.)
If one attempts to define Christian religion, he has a more
specific task; for here we are speaking of relationship to a
personal God as revealed in a specific person, Jesus Christ.
A Christian is, therefore, one who through daily associa-
tion with God, as he is revealed in the life and record of
Christ, has come to know God's will and joyfully conforms
his life to that will. Or, again, to be a Christian is to be
rightly related to all persons : God as we know him in Christ
and men as we find them interpreted by Christ. A Christian
is a friendly son of God and a brotherly friend of men. It
should be carefully noted that attitude toward persons de-
termines one's religious life — and this means all persons — in
so far as we know them and are conscious of them. No
man can have the right attitude toward some persons and
the wrong attitude toward others. Personality is essentially
one. It is a living principle, and he who despises the sacred-
ness of personality in one cannot properly respect it in an-
other. A man cannot love God and hate his fellow men,
nor can he really love his fellow men while he is deliberately
neglecting his Father God. The man in the South who
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 23
hates his black neighbor, the man on the coast who despises
the Japanese, the man in New England who scorns the im-
migrant, needs to ask himself thoughtfully whether, after
all, he really has the Christian spirit. In our country, with
its polyglot population, we need to be sure that we have a
religious life which will stand the test of such a definition.
In this matter of relationship the whole personality is in-
volved. It is not simply thinking correctly about persons, it
is not simply feeling right concerning persons, nor is it sim-
ply acting right toward them. The whole personality — intel-
lect, emotion, will — ^must respond to the other person. Hegel
said that religion regarded as knowledge was an ever-in-
creasing comprehension of God ; regarded as feeling, it was
an ever-increasing harmony with God; regarded as will, it
was an ever-increasing and spontaneous obedience to God.
And all three, he added, must be combined in one. If we
use the word "person" — including both God and man —
where Hegel used the word "God," we have a comprehen-
sive description of the right response of the soul which con-
stitutes religion. If, then, we define religion in terms of the
characteristics of personality, we would say that a Christian
is one whose whole personality goes out to a Christlike God
and to his fellow man in glad and responsive fellowship and
service.
24 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY I. THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.
"And one of the scribes came, and heard them questioning to-
gether, and knowing that he had answered them well, asked him,
What commandment is the first of all? Jesus answered. The first
is, Hear, O Israel ; The Lord our God, the Lord is one : and thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. The second is this,
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other com-
mandment greater than these." (Mark xii. 28-31.)
PART VII. CHRISTIAN LIFE, BOTH INDIVIDUAL AND
SOCIAL.
The Christian religion, therefore, has both an individual
and a social gospel. All religions have an individual gospel,
but the religions of the Bible alone have a real social gospel.
If the fact of God and man's relationship to him alone is
stressed, we have a rank individualism. If the relation of
man to man alone is stressed, we have rank socialism. But
Jesus combined the two in a perfectly harmonious gospel.
He taught that all men are sons of God because they par-
take of the very nature of God himself. He was, therefore,
very eager that men should consciously accept this sonship
and should live in accordance with the desire and purpose
of God. He wanted every individual by conscious and de-
liberate choice to pass out of the realm of potential sonship
into the realm of actual sonship.
At the same time Christ taught that all men were brothers.
The fact that every man had within him the very Godhood,
the fact that all were made in this image and likeness of
God, made them kindred to each other. They were heirs
of the same kingdom and possessors of the same nature.
It was necessary, therefore, not only that every man should
be rightly related to God, but also that he should have a
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 25
kindly feeling toward all men, thus setting up a kingdom of
brotherly men in which all would have full opportunity to
make the most and the best of life. An individual gospel
of the value of each person is essentially to give meaning to
society, and a social gospel of a race of brotherly men is
essential in order that each individual and society as a
whole may have opportunity to develop the Godhood within
it. The two cannot be divorced. Neither can really live
without the other. Individuals must be interested in hu-
manity, and groups of human beings known as institutions
and corporations must no longer be soulless ; they must be
true to the individual. Neither individualism nor socialism
is completely true; but combined in Christianity the es-
sence of both is preserved, and both become eminently true
and inspiring.
m
STUDY II.
Entrance and Growth in Christian Life.
2S CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY II. ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRIS-
TIAN LIFE.
"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness :
According to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my
transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity.
And cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions;
And my sin is ever before me.
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,
And done that which is evil in thy sight ;
That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest.
And be clear when thou judgest.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity;
And in sin did rny mother conceive me.
Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts ;
And in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom.
Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean :
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Make me to hear joy and gladness.
That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
Hide thy face from my sins.
And blot out all mine iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God;
And renew a right spirit within me." (Ps. li. i-io.)
PART I. REMOVING BARRIERS.
If life Is relationship, then real life cannot be possible if
there are barriers which keep us separated from other per-
sons. The fullest life will be the one which has fewest walls
of separation between it and other lives. In order that
I may enter into harmonious communion or friendship
with other persons, I must make sure that all barriers are
removed. The barriers are such as prejudice, hatred, jeal-
ousy, or some other form of sin against other persons. If
I have sinned against you, I have grieved you. I have
thrown up a barrier between you and me. Suppose you
have been very good to me and have helped me In every
hour of need; then suppose I just pass you by without ex-
pressing any gratitude to you for your kindness ; or suppose
I actively injure your reputation or your business or your
person. I have surely raised a barrier between us which
ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 29
makes common understanding and sympathy impossible.
You may continue to wish me well — indeed, if you are a true
person, you will wish me well — but you cannot possibly ap-
prove the way I have acted. There is just one way for me
to get back into your approving friendship, and that is to
change my attitude toward you and make you see that I
have changed my attitude.
Technically, this is called repentance. We care not what
it Is called ; what we want to know is its meaning. The word
itself means change of mind. It is this change of attitude
from one of indifference or hostility to one of interest and
friendliness. This change of attitude may be brought about
by my seeing the heinous results of my deeds on your life,
or by my seeing the continued goodness of your soul, or by
seeing how you hate my attitude but still love me and wish
me well. I will certainly never be turned to repentance by
seeing how you hate me in response to my hatred for you.
That never brings repentance.
My sense of repentance may strike deep into my emotion-
al life, or it may be more in the realm of sober judgment;
but, in any case, my whole personality sees its wrong and
deliberately comes back to you and tells you of the wrong
and asks you to forgive.
Sin and selfishness — perhaps we ought to say sin as selfish-
ness — ^have led us away from God. They have made us un-
grateful to God or even rebellious against his will. He has
done all possible for us. He has made large, full, and rich
life possible to us. But we turn from him and thus grieve
him. How can we get back into the approving love of God ?
We must see that our attitude is wrong. We must change
that attitude. This we will be induced to do when we see
how God disapproves our actions and when we see how he
loves us in spite of our attitude. This we are able to see in
the life and death of Christ as nowhere else; and it is for
this reason that presenting Christ to men has so often led
them to change their minds, to set aside the old attitude and
turn in loving fellowship to God. It means that we begin to
feel about evil as Christ feels about it. It means that we
have the attitude toward life which Christ has. Old atti-
tudes have passed away, and all things have become new.
30 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY 11. ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRIS-
TIAN LIFE.
"I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own
sake; and I will not remember thy sins." (Isa. xliii. 25.)
"I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a
cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee." (Isa.
xliv. 22.)
"Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah: though
your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they
be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." (Isa. i. 18.)
PART II. GOD'S ATTITUDE OF APPROVAL.
What ought to be my attitude toward one who has sinned
against me ? Shall it be hatred, anger, scorn, desire for re-
venge, or simple indifference? It should be none of these.
It ought to be one of hearty disapproval of the offender's
deeds and of the spirit which prompted those deeds. But if
I am really a true man, certainly if I am a Christian, my
attitude should be one of kindliness toward the man and de-
sire that he should change his attitude toward me. The one
thing I should want ought not to be revenge, but that he
shall come to see his error and change his attitude.
God's attitude toward selfish and sinful men is not one of
hatred. God never punishes for revenge ; his punishment is
always for reformation. Like a good father, he may have
to punish the child in order to show the child how he dis-
approves his spirit and action. But God loves all men al-
ways. He never hates men. He only disapproves — heartily
and strongly disapproves — the evil manner of life. Being
wholly righteous, he must disapprove all evil. "Sense of
value of an object, but not necessarily moral approbation of
the object, is the essence of love."^
i.Clarke, "The Christian Doctrine of God/' page 86.
'ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRISTIAN LIFE.
31
This does not, however, mean that we are shut out of
God's kingdom. God never casts us off. "The Ukeness to
Christ which St. John holds forth as the future heritage of
saints must have its root and ground in the essential consti-
tution of humanity. Man is the son of God, even if a lost
son."^ Sin does not destroy the sovereignty of God. It does
not take the man out of the field of God's love. It does not
sell man over to another. It simply raises a barrier between
man and God so that man cannot understand God and God
cannot approve the sinning man. The great consequence of
sin consists not in the physical suffering it entails, but in
the fact that it builds a barrier between us and God.
Since God is just and righteous, he cannot cease to dis-
approve our spirit and attitude so long as we continue to
act wrong and have a wrong attitude. But when we see that
we are wrong, when we decide to change our attitude, when
as the result of our new understanding we acknowledge our
wrong — then, of course, God as a righteous God must ap-
prove our action. He could not do otherwise. Some have
supposed that Christ had to persuade God to change his
attitude toward us. Not so. Christ's work is to help us
change our attitude toward our own sin by showing us how
God feels about that sin. Forgiveness must, therefore, fol-
low after this change on the part of the wrongdoer. It
cannot precede.
Forgiveness is, therefore, the change on the part of God
from the attitude of a disapproving love to the attitude of
an approving love, and it can come about only when the
spirit of the one forgiven is such that God can approve it
as worthy. The great result of forgiveness is that the sense
of estrangement between the forgiver and the one forgiven
is then removed, and a real fellowship may begin.
^Mcintosh, "The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ," page
439.
CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY II. ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRIS-
TIAN LIFE.
"On that day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the seaside.
And there were gathered unto him great multitudes, so that he en-
tered into a boat, and sat; and all the multitude stood on the beach.
And he spake to them many things in parables, saying, Behold, the
sower went forth to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell by the
wayside, and the birds came and devoured them : and others fell
upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth : and straight-
way they sprang up, because they had no deepness of earth: and
when the sun was risen^ they were scorched; and because they had
no root, they withered away. And others fell upon the thorns; and
the thorns grew up and choked them : and others fell upon the good
ground, and yielded fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some
thirty. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
"And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou
unto them in parables ? And he answered and said unto them, Unto
you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but
to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given,
and he shall have abundance : but whosoever hath not, from him shall
be taken away even that which he hath." (Matt. xiii. 1-12.)
PART III. THE LAW OF EXPRESSION.
When one has recognized himself to be in the wrong,
when he has deliberately decided to do right, when he has
turned his face in the direction of right associations, there
is yet need that he should give open expression to his deci-
sion. This is not so because religion arbitrarily demands it,
but because his nature is such that it is necessary. There is
a law of nature which says that whatsoever is covered and
unexpressed will die. If you express a thought, you will
strengthen it; if you suppress a thought or aspiration, you
kill it. Indeed, psychology goes farther than that and tells
us that no thought is ever a completed thought until it has
found some kind of expression. "A disembodied human
emotion is a sheer nonentity."^ The fuller your expression,
the more vivid and permanent the thought or aspiration.
^James, "Psychology," page 380.
ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRISTIAN LIFE.
33
If I am ashamed to acknowledge my friendship for you
or for any reason whatsoever fail to make such expression,
my friendship will surely die. If I take particular pains
never to be seen in your presence — which it will be readily
seen is a form of expression of my friendship — then I will
soon lose my friendship.
Now, one of the dangers of our present-day religious at-
titude is that we shall fail to recognize this fundamental
law. Particularly is this true with more cultured people.
There has arisen a general feeling of aversion to giving any
public expression to religious convictions. They tell you
that it is a matter to be settled between a man and God, that
it is no business of others, and such very plausible reasons
for refusing to express their convictions. But the law of
expression stands firm, and no excuse will abrogate its ef-
fects.
Fortunately, there are many forms of expression of reli-
gious conviction. One very important form of expression
is moral action. Another is service for those who need us.
Another is standing for right principles in spite of great
opposition. Still another way may be uniting one's self with
the organized Church. And yet another way may be a form
of public testimony In the proper place. None of these
forms can be neglected with impunity. They should never
be used for ostentation or for show. They should not be
too boldly forced upon others. All religious work must be
done with great respect for the sacredness of the privacy
and personality of others ; and yet we must face the fact that
the fuller the expression of conviction, the deeper will be the
conviction. We must never allow men to suppose they can
live a Christian life on the quiet. Nicodemus tried that and
failed, and his successors in our day could be named "le-
gion."
3
34 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY II. ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRIS-
TIAN LIFE.
"Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative
concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even
as they deUvered them unto us, who from the beginning were eye-
witnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also,
having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to
write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus; that thou
mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast
instructed." (Luke i. 1-4.)
"That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard,
that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and
our hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was
manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto
you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was
manifested unto us) ; that which we have seen and heard declare
we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us: yea,
and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus
Christ: and these things we write, that our joy may be made full."
(i John i. i-S.)
PART IV. THE MEANING OF FAITH.
Faith has been supposed by many to be a leap in the
dark. The Httle Sunday school boy defined it as "beUeving
what you know ain't so.'* The growth of the scientific
method and spirit has put much emphasis on fact as knowl-
edge and has seemed to discredit faith. Indeed, the concep-
tion of faith which was once held as a leap in the dark is
no longer tenable. Speaking of this old conception, Ames
says: "Faith has thus come to be regarded as the test of
religion, as knowledge is the organ and sphere of science.
Religion as faith, then, involves submission to authority;
and its test is sometimes represented in the willingness to
accept that which is intellectually inconsistent in itself, but
which is presented as the dictate of conscience or of the
divine will.""^ There is a reason for this conception of faith ;
for Tertullian, one of the early fathers, declared: "I believe
because it is absurd." St. Augustine advanced one step and
said he "believed that he might know," but his faith was not
based on knowledge.
Out of this conception of faith there has arisen a feeling
that no scientific mind can any longer act on faith; and if
ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 35
this were the true meaning of faith, it would need to be
abandoned. But are we so sure that faith is divorced from
all knowledge ? It may go beyond proved knowledge, but it
certainly must be based on knowledge. With Abelard
we must say : "We believe because we understand."
There is undoubtedly a place for authority in religion as
in all other fields of experience. No man has or ever will
verify all truth or all experience. We act on authority in
science just as much as we do in religion. I have never
demonstrated that the world is round, but I accept it on
authority. While every man must of necessity be an experi-
menter in the field of religion, he cannot compass all reli-
gious experience and must accept some things on authority.
Every man cannot do all the scholarly work necessary to
verify all the records of the Bible, but he must accept much
of this on authority.
But this does not contravene our statement that all faith
must be based on knowledge, for authority is a kind of
knowledge ; indeed, the kind of knowledge on which we base
ninety-five per cent of our life's activities. A man who ver-
ifies by actual experiment the principles that lie behind five
per cent of his life processes is no tyro either in science or
in philosophy.
I remember hearing in my early boyhood a preacher illus-
trate what he meant by faith. There was a small stream
running through my town which in the rainy season often
rose very suddenly, becoming an angry torrent. I crossed
this stream on a footbridge every day as I went to and from
school. My preacher friend said that if I went down to that
stream and the water was overflowing that footbridge, but
a man standing there told me that it was still in place, it
would be faith if I staked my life on his word and ventured
to wade in. Well, that depended on the man who told me
that the bridge was still there. If he were an ordinary
tramp, my act would not be faith, but foolhardiness. If it
were my father, however, it would be faith, for I would
have a basis of knowledge. I would accept his word as
authority, for I would know I could trust him to give me the
truth. Faith divorced from knowledge is mere superstition
and cannot be commended to any one.
*Ames, "The Psychology of Religious Experience," page 413.
36 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY 11. ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRIS-
TIAN LIFE.
"And straightway he constrained the disciples to enter into the
boat, and to go before him unto the other side, till he should send
the multitudes away. And after he had sent the multitudes away,
he went up into the mountain apart to pray: and when even was
come, he was there alone. But the boat was now in the midst of the
sea, distressed by the waves ; for the wind was contrary. And in the
fourth watch of the night he came unto them, walking upon the sea.
And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were trou-
bled, saying, It is a ghost ; and they cried out for fear. But straight-
way Jesus spake unto them, saying. Be of good cheer; it is I; be
not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou,
bid me come unto thee upon the waters. And he said. Come. And
Peter went down from the boat, and walked upon the waters to come
to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid ; and beginning
to sink, he cried out, saying. Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus
stretched forth his hand, and took hold of him, and saith unto him,
O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they
were gone up into the boat, the wind ceased. And they that were in
the boat worshiped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God."
(Matt. xiv. 22-33.)
PART V. THE MEANING OF FAITH.
(Continued.)
Simple knowledge is not all o£ faith. Many a man gives
intellectual assent as to the reality of God, but he has no real
faith. A second element in faith is personal commitment.
It lies in the realm of the will and perhaps involves both the
will and the emotions. Knowledge merges into faith when
we act on that knowledge. "A belief that God is worthy to
be trusted becomes faith when God is trusted.'"
To go back to my former illustration, my bare belief in
the truth of my father's statement about the footbridge
would have become faith when I committed myself to him
and allowed him to lead me into the water and out onto
that bridge. Our knowledge may not always be verified, but
it must have rationality. Faith may be defined as willing-
ness to act on a rational conviction. The two elements of
^Clarke, "The Christian Doctrine of God," page 469.
ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 3;
faith, therefore, are : First, the intellectual, or belief, which is
the mental attitude of assent to the reality of a fact or per-
son; and the second is volitional, which takes the form of
active and glad surrender of one's self to that fact or person.
It must not be forgotten, however, that faith goes farther
than knowledge. While it must always base itself on knowl-
edge, it must and does transcend verified knowledge. The
scientist finds certain facts of light and sound waves to be
verifiable; and, building on these facts, he postulates ether,
which is a pure act of faith. It transcends verifiable facts;
it goes beyond what has actually been proved. It is a ven-
ture, not in the dark, but without complete light. Reason
has interpretive insight, according to Hegel, which enables
it to go beyond what it has verified. Without this there
could be no advance in knowledge.
The Christian, therefore, is not unscientific in going far-
ther than verified knowledge. He is in line with the best
scientific method. "Now, faith means we are confident of
what we hope for, convinced of what we do not see." (Heb.
xi. I.) We cannot demonstrate God, but it is reasonable to
believe that he is. Our faith does not cut across reason;
it simply goes beyond what we have proved as a fact.
Therefore to commit ourselves to God, to accept his will as
our will, is not blind superstition. It is just what the scien-
tist must do in his particular field.
"The doctrine of God contains truth to which the meth-
od of demonstration does not correspond. The intellect
must believe in him on the evidence that we possess — and
it is great — and the whole man must rise to him in the
direction which the evidence warrants by an act of faith;
for it is the nature of faith to go out beyond sight and to
take hold upon that which is not seen or proved. Faith is
a rising of the soul to truth."^
We have but faith : we cannot know.
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness : let it grow.
— Introduction to "In Memoriam."
^Clarke, "The Christian Doctrine of God," page 467.
38 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY II. ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRIS-
TIAN LIFE.
"Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will
keep my word : and my Father will love him, and we will come unto
him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth
not my words: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the
Father's who sent me.
"These things have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you.
But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remem-
brance all that I said unto you. Peace I leave with you ; my peace I
give unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful." (John xiv. 23-27.)
"And I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and
I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou
hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are." (John xvii.
II.)
PART VI. THE LAW OF ASSOCIATION.
Francis Bacon, in his essay on friendship, writes: "A
man would better relate himself to a statue or picture than
to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother." And another pas-
sage in the same essay says that friendship "maketh day-
hght in the understanding out of darkness and confusion of
thoughts." If one wishes to grow in mind and soul, he must
associate with characters that have mind and soul richness.
Even dwelling with a picture which depicts character would
be better than dwelling solitary. All growth is dependent on
association. Emerson says that the purpose of a friend is
to make us do what we can. Association with a noble per-
sonality draws out from us the higher and nobler qualities.
"It sometimes seems as if the single, all-inclusive counsel
that one need ever care to give to another might be summed
up in the one sentence : Stay persistently in the presence of
the best in the sphere in which you seek attainment. Hear
persistently the best music. See persistently the best art.
Read persistently the best literature. Stay persistently in the
presence of the best in character. Results must follow such
association with the best."^
^King, "The Laws of Friendship," page 155.
ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 39
Life is relationship. It is the contact of soul with soul.
It is the responsiveness of soul to soul. Life comes by no
other process than by association. If it were possible to take
a human child and completely isolate it from all personal
contact, it would grow up to be hardly a human. All of
those finer elements which characterize manhood would be
lacking. There would be no fully developed sympathy or
love or unselfishness or pity; in fact, the most distinctive
characteristics of a developed soul — those powers which can
be grown only in association with kindred souls — would be
entirely lacking. If, then, life is association, it will be deep-
ly colored by the type of association it finds. He who would
build the fullest character must of necessity associate with
the best. If one wants the highest, therefore it is not a
matter of choice whether he will be a Christian or not.
God as revealed in Christ is acknowledged by the whole
world to be the highest type of manhood, and to associate
with him means the fullest life. The best cannot be found
elsewhere.
If I am to associate with my friend, it will not be through
physical proximity, but through mental and spiritual sym-
pathy. I will try to find out what my friend thinks of life,
what his attitude is toward the various facts of personal en-
vironment. As I find out his attitude I will put myself in a
kindly and sympathetic attitude toward him, and little by lit-
tle we will grow alike. I do not have to strive to grow like
him. All I need to do is to hold myself persistently and
sympathetically in the presence of his attitude of life, and I
will inevitably grow like him. Constant and sympathetic as-
sociation Is an absolute law of growth. He who would grow
in God's likeness must constantly and persistently put him-
self into the presence of God through Bible study, prayer,
meditation, and service ; and he will naturally, normally, and
inevitably grow into a Godlike character.
40 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY II. ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRIS-
TIAN LIFE.
"But he that is the greater among you, let him become as the
younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve." (Luke xxii.
26.)
"And whosoever would be first among you shall be servant of
all. For the Son of man also came not to be ministered unto, but
to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." (Mark x. 44,
45.)
"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take
up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life
shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the
gospel's shall save it" (Mark viii. 34» 35-)
PART VII. THE LAW OF SERVICE.
The psychologists tell us that all thought is impulsive —
that is, all thought tends to pass into action and will do so
unless restrained by another thought or a direct act of the
will. They further tell us that those thoughts which are not
allowed to express themselves are killed or made ineffective.
They say that a thought never becomes fully alive which is
not allowed to find expression. Conversely, when a thought
is expressed, it becomes alive, active, and is made intense.
One way in which thought may best express itself is in
overt deeds. Service, therefore, is a law of growth. If we
expect our nobler thoughts and impulses to grow, we must
give them expression in positive service. If my friend gets
sick and I do not visit him, do not do anything to help him,
and suppress every impulse of my soul to comfort him, my
friendship will surely die. Often we get too busy or too
preoccupied to give expression to our friendly impulses, and
hence our friendship dies. It costs something to be a real
friend and to develop one's own spirit of friendliness.
Thoughtfulness, love, and unselfish service are the price we
must pay; and many are not willing to pay this price. But
he who will not pay this price loses his own soul. He who
will not give himself must starve.
ENTRANCE AND GROWTH IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 41
"Who gives himself with his alms feeds three :
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me."
To be a friend of Christ, therefore, one must serve him.
Not that Christ needs our service so much as we need to
cultivate the spirit which this service will engender. To
grow in Christian life one must give himself freely to those
who need him and share his love of Christ with those who
know him not. "Lord, when did we see you hungry and fed
you? or thirsty and gave you drink? . . . The King will
answer then, I tell you truly, in so far as ye did it to one of
these brothers of mine, even to the least of them, you did it
unto me." (Matt. xxv. 37-40.)
Whatsoever does not serve dies. This is a law of life.
If I tie my hand to my side and allow it to stay there for
six months and then remove the bandage, it will hang limp
and lifeless by my side. It has not served ; it has been in-
active and has atrophied. Full many a man starts out with
a deep religious impression and aspirations, but for some
cause or other he fails to give these aspirations expression
in action. Later he is amazed to find that his truest aspira-
tions seem to be dead. His deep yearning for fellowship
with Christ has vanished. He finds his soul cold and with-
out religious enthusiasm. He has not served his cause, and
his religious soul has died. At our peril do we get too busy
to have a share in the Christian campaign ; and if later we
wake to the fact of an atrophied soul, it will be the sure sign
that we have been breaking an inexorable law.
I think this is the authentic sign and seal
Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad
And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
Into a rage to suffer for mankind,
And recommence at sorrow : drops like seed
After the blossom, ultimate of all.
Say does the seed scorn earth and seek the sun?
Surely it has no other end and aim
Than to drop, once more to die, into the ground,
Taste cold and darkness and oblivion there,
And then rise, treelike grow through pain to joy.
More joy and most joy — do man good again.
— Browning's "Balaustion's Adventure"
STUDY III.
Personal Results of Christian Experience.
44 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY III. PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN
EXPERIENCE.
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit." (John iii. 6.)
"For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is
life and peace. . . . But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus
from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from
the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit
that dwelleth in you." (Rom. viii. 6-11.)
"And [the jailer] brought them out and said. Sirs, what must I
do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou
shalt be saved, thou and thy house. And they spake the word of the
Lord unto him, with all that were in his house. And he took them
the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes ; and was bap-
tized, he and all his, immediately. And he brought them up into his
house, and set food before them, and rejoiced greatly, with all his
house, having believed in God." (Acts xvi. 30-34.) '
PART I. WHAT IS CONVERSION?
In the preceding chapter we have gone over the steps
which one takes in entering a Christian life and growing
into a Christian experience. At the very threshold of this
growing experience one passes through what is commonly
called conversion. We have discussed these various steps
first in order that this difficult topic might become more
plain. Of recent years there has been much discussion as
to whether one needs to be converted or not. Should not a
child, if properly trained and living in the right environ-
ment, just grow into a normal religious experience? Does
there need to be any great change in such a life as this?
Here is a boy who has been reared in a Christian home with
the influence of Christian parents. He has gone to Sunday
school and church. He has never known anything save to
love and obey Christ in so far as his childish mind under-
stands Christ. Does such a child need conversion? Cer-
tainly such a child does not need a great cataclysmic break
with the past. He does not need to weep and mourn over
great sins. So far as he knows, he has been fashioning his
life after the life of Christ. What, then, does conversion
PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 45
mean to him? Perhaps it may be best described as a con-
scious acceptance of the Christ program as his Ufe program,
a deHberate giving himself over to Christ, whom he has fol-
lowed rather by imitation in the past. Up to this time he
has been a kind of Christian by authority. He has lived as
best he could like Christ because his father and mother
taught him to do so. But sometime he must come to ac-
countability. He must deliberately and consciously make
this life his own. He must do from inner impulse what he
has done by a kind of outward compulsion. When that time
arrives there will be a defining of Christian experience, a
growth in Christian consciousness. There will be a con-
scious loyalty which he never had before. There will be a
deliberate choosing of the Christian life as his own which
will usher him into a deeper experience, and this is certainly
a type of conversion.
Indeed, something of this same type of experience may
come to a man who has been trying to follow the Christian
life for years. Speaking of the validity of sudden conver-
sion, Stevens says : *'On the other hand, we shall remember
this also, that in all education, religious and intellectual,
there are times of rapid growth and times of slow; there
are moments of surprise when truths burst suddenly on the
mind; there are periods of stagnation or even decay, and
then times when interest is renewed and the spirit leaps up
and presses forward and hastens to maturity."^
This dawning of consciousness of the deeper meaning of
life, this ripening fellowship with God which seems to come
like the ebb of the ocean, this high tide of the Spirit, as some
one has called it, is really and truly of the essence of con-
version. We must not discredit it because it is not cataclys-
mic, or of the nature of an upheaval. God works in many
ways, and this is one of his genuine methods of changing
life.
^Stevens, "The Psychology of the Christian Soul," pages 27, 28.
46 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY III. PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN
EXPERIENCE.
"But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and asked of him
letters to Damascus unto the synagogues, that if he found any that
were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound
to Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew
nigh unto Dam.ascus : and suddenly there shone round about him a
light out of heaven : and he fell upon the earth, and heard a voice
saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said.
Who art thou. Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecut-
est: but rise, and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what
thou must do. And the men that journeyed with him stood speech-
less, hearing the voice, but beholding no man. And Saul arose from
the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing; and
they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus." (Acts
ix. 1-8.)
PART IL WHAT IS CONVERSION?
(Continued.)
But this quiet, conscious acceptance of Christ as our
Friend does not cover the whole ground. There are those
who have gone far into sin, those whose trend of life has
gotten hard set toward evil ; and when these become Chris-
tians, there is likely to be much upheaval. There must be a
break with the past. Sometime or other such a person must
come to the realization that he is wrong, that his movement
is away from God, that his attitude is out of harmony with
God. He must deliberately make up his mind to face about,
to change his attitude, to give himself to God. Such a con-
version was St. Paul's. Such a conversion was Sam Had-
ley's, of the famous Water Street Mission. Such a conver-
sion is the experience of thousands who have lived in re-
bellion against God. This is the type of conversion described
in such definitions as the following: "The restoration of
friendship between a man and God is conversion." 'Tt is
the definite conscious turning of a man from sin to God."
*Tt is change of character and ruling disposition."
When man has done his part — that is, turned to God — it
is then possible for God to do his part — impart life to the
man. Man by turning to God has removed the barriers that
PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, 47
separated him from God and made it possible for God to
have access to his soul. The impress of the soul of God on
the soul of man has been technically called regeneration. It
is, as it were, a rebirth, a birth into a God- fellowship. Man
is changed from a possible or potential son into a real son.
God awakens in the man new affections, new aspirations,
new motives. The processes of a new character are set in
motion, and man enters into a fellowship with God, which
is the essence of being a Christian.
While this is a process shrouded in mystery, it is no more
so than the birth of a human friendship. What one of us
has not at some time grieved a companion ? But finally we
have come to the realization that we have done wrong; we
have changed our attitude ; we have come back to our com-
panion and asked for forgiveness, and immediately there
has sprung up in each soul a new enthusiasm. The touch of
one soul upon another is the most mysterious fact of life,
but it is likewise the most real and common experience.
When a man deliberately turns to God, something really
happens in his life. There is a new dynamic, a new enthu-
siasm, a God in us which we never had before.
All sense of estrangement is removed. A man is at one
with God. "The newly awakened soul opens its eyes to the
assuring smile of God. All inner cleavage, all isolation, all
sense of contradiction in the universe is removed. The soul
is at home in God's world."^
^Hermann, "Eucken and Bergson," page 62.
48 CHRISTIAN LIFE—A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY III. PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN
EXPERIENCE.
"But I say, Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of
the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other;
that ye may not do the things that ye would. But if ye are led by
the Spirit, ye are not under the law. . . . And they that are of
Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts
thereof. If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk."
(Gal. V. 16-18, 24, 25.)
"Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ ; through whom also we have had our
access by faith into this grace wherein we stand; and we rejoice in
hope of the glory of God." (Rom. v. i, 2.)
PART III. UNIFICATION OF PERSONALITY.
William James defines conversion as unification of per-
sonality. "To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive
grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so
many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden,
by which a self hitherto divided and consciously wrong, in-
ferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right,
superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold on
religious realities."^
Eucken speaks of a "for and against" into which our
circle of life is divided.^ The **for'* is the call of the divine
within the human soul ; the "against" is that nearest-at-hand
world, the lowest impulses which would keep us from our
best. "The soul in humanity," says Clarke, 'Vas not born
into peace, but into conflict."^ The fact of Hfe itself con-
tains this strange contradiction. We are bom with capaci-
ties for good and for evil, and it is only by struggle that we
are able to make the good dominate the life. But this strug-
gle is necessary to give moral quality to the life. If we
were good by necessity, as it were, we would not really be
good ; for nothing is good which is not the result of choice.
Hence the most intense reality of human life is struggle,
conflict, aspiration for the good in conflict with the tug of
^James, "Varieties of Religious Experience," page 189.
^Eucken, "Truth of Religion," page 3.
^Clarke, "The Christian Doctrine of God," page 456.
PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 49
the evil. So much is this the case that our very nervous
nature itself seems to have taken on a dual life. *'The
mechanism for the cognative intellectual group of activities
is the central nervous system, and that of feeling is the sym-
pathetic nervous system. This accounts for the fact that
the individual is liable to be torn between two contending
worlds, between science and religion, between mysticism and
worldly wisdom — that is, between the lower and external
world and the inward spiritual life.''^
As these two types of ideas rise from the subconscious
realm into the conscious, they struggle for mastery, and the
man is drawn in two directions. Groups of ideas concerned
with good and with evil, being so diametrically opposed to
each other, make in man the most intense battle. Hence it
is that when a man begins the Christian life his inner con-
flict may be of the most desperate sort. The great question
is, Which set of ideas shall hold the center of consciousness?
It will be impossible to destroy entirely either set, but to
give one central place in one's conscious life is to make it the
master of the life. "It makes a great difference to man,"
says Professor James, "whether one set of his ideas or an-
other be the center of his energy; and it makes a great dif-
ference as regards any set of ideas which he may possess,
whether they become central or peripheral v/ith him. To
say that a man is 'converted' means, in these terms, that
religious ideas originally peripheral (on the outer tdgo. of
consciousness, or dim) in his consciousness now take the
central place and that religious aims form the habitual cen-
ter of his life energy."^
When a man becomes a Christian, he deliberately puts his
will power on the side of the Godward ideas — on the side
of this "for," as Eucken calls it. He exalts these ideas into
the central field of consciousness. The battle will not all be
over, for the evilward ideas will still remain on the outer
rim of consciousness to harass him in his weaker hours.
But so long as these Godward impulses are held in the cen-
tral position, just so long will he be secure from failure.
The impress of the soul of God on the soul of man makes
it possible to bring these Godward ideas into the central
position.
^Ames, "The Psychology of Religious Experience," page z^^'
^James, "Varieties of Religious Experience," page 196.
4
50 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY III. PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN
EXPERIENCE.
"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor hfe, nor angels, nor
principahties, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to sepa-
rate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
(Rom. viii. 38, 39.)
"That in all things he might have the preeminence." (Col. i. 18.)
"Whatsoever ye do, work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto
men ; knowing that from the Lord ye shall receive the recompense of
the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ." (Col. iii. 23, 24,)
"I have been crucified with Christ ; and it is no longer I that live,
but Christ liveth in me : and that life which I now live in the flesh I
live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me,
and gave himself up for me." (Gal. ii. 20.)
PART IV. A SENSE OF LOYALTY.
In this attempt to make Godward ideas the central and
dominating ideas of the energy, the spirit of loyalty must
find place. "Loyalty shall mean,'" says Professor Royce,
*'the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a
person to a cause. A man is loyal, first, when he has some
cause to which he is loyal ; when, secondly, he willingly and
thoroughly devotes himself to this cause; and when, thirdly,
he expresses his loyalty in some sustained and practical way
by acting steadily in the service of his cause."^
The great need of many lives is just this sense of loyalty
which will centralize their energies and give them driving
power. Full many a person is wasting life on the mere
twaddle of nothingness because they have never found any
cause big enough nor any person attractive enough to grip
up their lives into a unity and give purpose to their activi-
ties. Their thoughts are scattered, their energies are dissi-
pated, their purposes vacillating — all for the need of a great
centralizing cause. Professor Royce declares that "a self
is a life (only) in so far as it is unified by a single purpose.""*
^Royce, "The Philosophy of Loyalty," pages 16, 17. ^Ihid,, page
171.
PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 51
"It is devoting the self to a cause that, after all, first makes
it a rational and unified self instead of what the life of many
a man remains — namely, a cauldron of seething and bub-
bling efforts to be somebody, a cauldron which boils dry
when life ends."^ **If you want to find a way of living
which surmounts doubts and centralizes your powers, it
must be some such a way as all the loyal in common have
trodden since first loyalty was known amongst men."^
Most of us are so divided between the impulses for good
and those which are either indifferent or positively evil that
we tread round in a circle and never make any progress.
"Speaking generally,'" says Professor James, "our moral and
practical attitude, at any time given, is always a resultant
of two sets of forces within us, impulses pushing in one way
and obstructions and inhibitions holding us back. 'Yes, yes,'
say the impulses. 'No, no,' say the inhibitions."® The only
thing which will break down the inhibitions and enable one
to live at his best is a great emotion of some kind, a great
enthusiasm. This can best be engendered by giving one
some object or cause to which one may be loyal. "Given a
certain amount of love, indignation, generosity, magnanim-
ity, admiration, loyalty, or enthusiasm of self -surrender, the
result is always the same. That whole raft of cowardly
obstructions which in tame persons and dull moods are sov-
ereign impediments to action sink away at once."*
The great need, therefore, of those who find themselves
weak and vacillating, those in whom the Godward ideas
have small chance of remaining central, is to find some great
cause for loyalty which will so centralize the being and so
unify their energies as to give them a driving purpose in life.
Many a man has failed to live a life of moral content simply
because the temptations have been too persuasive. The in-
hibitions or obstructions can be swept away only by a great
supreme loyalty.
^Royce, "The Philosophy of Loyalty," page 46. ^Ibid,, page 172.
^James, ''Varieties of Religious Experience," page 261. ^Ibid.,
page 266.
52 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY III. PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN
EXPERIENCE.
"And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and An-
drew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were
fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will
make you to become fishers of men. And straightway they left their
nets, and followed him." (Mark i. 16-18.)
"And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excel-
lency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of
God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ, and him crucified." (i Cor. ii. i, 2.)
"Thomas therefore, who is called Didymus, said unto his fellow
disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him." (John xi. 16.)
PART V. TO WHAT SHALL WE BE LOYAL?
If loyalty be necessary for the centralizing of one's pow-
ers, then the question immediately arises. To what shall one
be loyal? This is a supreme question, since that to which
we are loyal will be the molding factor of our lives. We
dare not make a mistake here, for life is at stake. To
choose less than the best as our object of loyalty would be
to condemn our lives to mediocrity when excellence might
have been ours. To what, then, shall we be loyal? Some
have felt that it was enough to be loyal to a great piece of
work, and undoubtedly this is an inspiring object. It has
strengthened many a man in hours of great strain to have a
great task to do. But, in the very nature of the case, no
work can be permanent. Changing times and conditions
will demand new applications of energy and new forms of
work. Others have felt that devotion to principles was a
sufficient motive. But principles are cold and lifeless, and to
make them the center of one's loyalty robs the life of
warmth and enthusiasm. Still others have felt that self-
culture should be our goal and center of loyal aspiration.
But the difficulty here is that self-culture is its own worst
enemy. Self is never a sufficient goal, because to concen-
trate on one's own inner life takes us away from contact
with other souls, which is our only means of growth.
All of these ideas are more or less individualistic. If
PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 53
life is relationship, then one dare not chose any object of
loyalty which does not bind his life up with other personal
life. To give one's self to things builds barriers around the
life which make it impossible for one to get in contact with
persons, and to be separated from persons is death. Hence
our object of loyalty must be a person; and if it is to be the
greatest source of power, it must be the greatest person.
Here none but the best will do, and the best is God. In the
person of God as we know him in Christ we must find our
center of loyalty.
Eucken has said: ''A negative movement from a self-
centered, self -enslaved individuality to a God-centered per-
sonality, a movement from the sense world to the self and
through the self inwardly to God, is at once the assertion and
true salvation of our true selfhood."
When one deliberately gives himself over to loyalty to
Christ, one ceases to be a self-centered man. His life at
once begins to take on larger proportions. He is brought at
once into a wider field of interest. "The psychologist says
that by a sudden emotion or otherwise the life has become
organized around a new nervous center; that the old chan-
nels of thought have been walled up; and that the self has
become identified w4th a new world, v/here broader and
newer channels of thought must be found."^
Religiously speaking, the thing that has happened Is the
touch of the soul of God on the soul of a man, giving him
new impulses and new enthusiasm. From thinking alone of
self the converted one immediately begins to feel himself
impelled to help others. Something has really happened in
the life that makes all life bigger and more unselfish. It
was such a loyalty as this which transformed Saul the
Pharisee into Paul the Christian and world citizen. It was
his intense loyalty which enabled him to say: "For me to
live is Christ." It made him a new man.
^The author's "Introducing Men to Christ," page 37.
54 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY III. PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN
EXPERIENCE.
"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons
of God. For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear;
but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
The Spirit himself beareth witness with our Spirit, that we are
children of God." (Rom. viii. 14-16.)
"Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature : the old
things are passed away; behold, they are become new." (2 Cor. 5-
17.)
PART VI, THE REVALUATION OF THE SELF.
Side by side with this change from a self-centered to a
God-centered personality there arises in the Christian man a
new valuation of himself. The new relationship to God
opens up vast possibilities of growth and achievement and at
once calls the life to more strenuous endeavor. Eucken says
that through religion "our existence raises itself to incompa-
rable greatness and intrinsic value, and into our being the es-
sence of the cosmos enters and longs for our decision."^
A man's life is dignified by its relationships. A young
college friend of mine was invited to be the guest of the
President of the United States. His Hfe immediately
seemed more important to all his friends. He who comes to
associate with the infinite God finds his life larger and more
worthy than he had before dreamed it might be.
"It seems that the heightened worth of self and the altru-
istic impulses in conversion are closely bound up together;
and the differences between them lie simply in the different
content of consciousness, determined by the direction in
which it is turned. The central fact underlying both is the
formation of a new ego, a fresh point of reference for men-
tal states."^ Speaking of the great power of great religious
truths to release energy within a man, Stevens says : "These
and such as these pull a man together and, it may be, send
him out on a new path of life with a swing. (They) open
^Eucken, "The Truth of Religion," page 3.
"Starbuck, "The Psychology of Religion," page 129.
PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 55
up the future to him with promise and hope and show him
the possibiUty of achieving something that is worthy."^
This new valuation of the self is not simply an emotional
estimate ; it has its roots in reality. New powers have been
released within the soul which had heretofore been dormant
and undiscovered. It is a well-known fact that each of us
has great physical resources which are used only in emer-
gencies. The house in which I was- boarding once suddenly
caught fire and burned to the ground. It was located far
out in the suburbs of Atlanta, so no immediate help was
available. After summoning the fire company, I set to work
getting out the most valuable things. Soon three negro men
arrived to help me. We went into the parlor and picked up
a big upright piano, a man at each corner, and marched out
of the room, down eight or nine steps off the porch, then
down a still longer flight of steps off the high terrace on
which the house was located, and placed the piano safely on
the other side of the street. Again we entered and picked
up a large bookcase filled with books, weighing perhaps a
half more than the piano, and carried it to safety. Under
ordinary circumstances I could not have so much as lifted
one corner of that case; but I had the strength somewhere
stored away, and the great emergency brought it out.
In similar fashion we all have more of spiritual capacity
than we are using. When we have a religious experience,
these dormant powers are awakened into activity, and this
is the real basis for revaluation. Speaking of the result of a
religious experience in the life. Professor Starbuck says : "It
is as if brain areas which had lain dormant had now sudden-
ly come into activity, as if stored-up energy had been liber-
ated and now began to function."^
What is needed in the life of a man to release this energy
is the touch of God's life. All about us are men and women
who are living far less than their best. They are using only
a small per cent of their spiritual resources. If they are
ever to come to their best. It will be because of the contagion
of the God life which will liberate their dormant powers.
Each man of us must ask himself whether he is living at
his best. If we are not, we should ask God to give us life.
^Stevens, "The Psychology of the Christian Soul," page 97.
^Starbuck, "The Psychology of ReHgion," page 132.
56 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY III. PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN
EXPERIENCE.
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering-, kind-
ness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such
there is no law." (Gal. v. 22, 23.)
"Behold, this is the third time I am ready to come to you ; and I
will not be a burden to you : for I seek not yours, but you. . . .
And I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls." (2 Cor.
xii. 14, 15- )
"And he answered and said unto them, Go and tell John the
things which you have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead
are raised up, the poor have good tidings preached to them." (Luke
vii. 22.)
PART VII. ENTHUSIASM FOR HUMANITY.
Christ once said to his disciples : *'By this will every one
recognize that you are my disciples, if you have love one for
another." (John xiii. 35.) The nonbelievers said of the
early Christians : "Behold how these Christians love one
another \" The test of a Christian life always has been and
always will be its attitude toward other men. If Christian
life is being rightly related to all persons — God and men —
then he who hates or scorns his fellow men cannot be a real
Christian. Christian life has always shown itself in friend-
liness. Ames records the experience of a highly trained
woman to v/hom religious experience meant new interest in
people. "New love of people took possession of me/' she
writes. "I don't think I had ever before cared deeply for
any one. Now even the meanest person seems wonderfully
significant simply as a human being."^
Any one who has done any evangelistic work in which
men have been brought to a deep consciousness of God
knows how frequent this phenomenon of new kindliness to
men appears. Many times after an appeal for loyalty to
God I have had college men come to me to know how they
could get right with their fellow men. No religious expe-
^Ames, "The Psychology of Religious Experience," page 242.
PERSONAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.
57
rience is genuine which does not affect our relation to men.
Within twenty hours of writing this paragraph I was speak-
ing to a group of business men about what Christ could do
for life. In this particular address I was not emphasizing
the social aspect of Christ's message, and yet at the close a
business man deeply concerned about his relation to his fa-
ther came for an interview. For some reason unaccountable
to him the father had conceived a great aversion to the son.
This business man was deeply grieved and felt that his own
religious life was on trial. He felt that he could not really
be a Christian if he did not somehow show such genuine
kindliness as to win his father's confidence and love.
In Montgomery's poem, "The Watchman," the captain of
the guard at Christ's tomb was completely transformed in
his attitude toward humanity by seeing the risen Christ :
I care no more for glory; all desire
For honor and for strife is gone from me,
All eagerness for war. I only care
To help and save bruised beings and to give
Some comfort to the weak and suffering;
I cannot even hate those Jews: my lips
Speak harshly of them, but within my heart
I only feel compassion; and I love
All creatures, to the vilest of the slaves,
Who seem to me as brothers. Claudia,
Scorn me not for this weakness; it will pass-
Surely 'twill pass in time — and I shall^ be
Maximus, strong and valiant once again,
Forgetting that slain god. And yet, and yet —
. He looked like one who could not be forgot !
This is no fanciful picture. This is just what has been
happening for centuries. It is the new interest in humanity
kindled by Jesus Christ which has built hospitals in China,
asylums in India, and schools everywhere. The service of
humanity was not multiplied, but was really initiated by
Jesus Christ. Speaking of the pagan peoples before Christ,
Seeley says : "Humanity was known to them as an occasional
impulse, but not as a standing rule of life; but with the
coming of Christ this lethargy passed away, and humanity
becomes a passion v/ith the early Christians."^ When one
becomes a Christian, something really happens in his life.
^Seeley, "Ecce Homo," pages 154, 155.
STUDY IV.
The Message of the Non- Christian Religions.
6o CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY IV. THE MESSAGE OF THE NON-CHRIS-
TIAN RELIGIONS.
"They that fashion a graven image are all of them vanity ; and the
things that they delight in shall not profit; and their own witnesses
see not, nor know : that they may be put to shame. Who hath fash-
ioned a god, or molten an image that is profitable for nothing? Be-
hold, all his fellows shall be put to shame; and the workmen, they
are of men : let them all be gathered together, let them stand up ; they
shall fear, they shall be put to shame together." (Isa. xliv. 9-11.)
"He hath cast off thy calf, O Samaria; mine anger is kindled
against them : how long will it be ere they attain to innocency ? For
from Israel is even this ; the workman made it, and it is no God ; yea,
the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces." (Hos. viii. 5, 6.)
"For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made,
even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without
excuse : because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God,
neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their
senseless heart was darkened." (Rom. i. 20, 21.)
PART I. THE GOD OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS.
In order to understand clearly the uniqueness of the
Christian message it is necessary to set forth very briefly
the message of the non-Christian faiths. It will be neces-
sary to do full credit to these religions if we are to have a
fair understanding of the supremacy of Christianity. Sure-
ly every religion has much of good in it; for it represents, in
part at least, the striving of the Spirit of God with these
people as he attempted to lead all men to himself. "The
scientist," says Professor Knox, "may ignore the wisdom of
Asia, but the Christian cannot ignore its faiths. He must
consider their claim and compare them with his own."
Perhaps we shall find that this comparison will be the great-
est proof of the supremacy of Christ's gospel.
As a religion is determined by its conception of God, let
us first see what these non- Christian faiths have to say con-
cerning this ultimate reality.
Islam holds firmly to a personal Being who is the divine
and final person in the universe. "There is no God but
God," is the battle cry of the Mohammedan. In the fact of
THE MESSAGE OF NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 6l
a personal God, Islam is like unto Christianity; but in the
characteristics of that God they stand far apart. Christian-
ity believes in a God who is self-existent, has free will, but
always acts in accordance with his own highest self, Islam,
on the other hand, sets forth a God who is self-existent, has
a free will, acts in entirely arbitrary fashion, without any
regard for self-consistency. The Mohammedan God is,
therefore, one without consistency or, one may almost say,
without real morality ; for no person who is arbitrary can be
completely moral. Of the ninety-nine names given to the
God of Islam, there is none that denotes the idea of father-
hood or tender care. He is absolutely separate and distinct
from the world and touches it only according to caprice, not
according to any law of self-consistency. Such a God, su-
premely worthy in its conception of unity, which opposes
all polytheism and destroys all idol worship, can hardly sat-
isfy the longings of the human soul for fellowship with the
divine.
Islam arose out of a recoil from the Mariolatry and prac-
tical polytheism of an effete Christianity. It is Christianity's
greatest and most powerful rebuke. One cannot visit Pales-
tine without being deeply moved by the tragedy of the situ-
ation. The idolatrous form of Christianity which gave rise
to Mohammedanism has in turn corrupted that religion until
it has become essentially ilodatrous in its practice among the
common people. While its founder, like that of Christian-
ity, taught that there was one God, its degenerate form, like
that of Christianity, is much given to sacred shrines, holy
places, and holy persons — all of which are virtually wor-
shiped by the common people.
62 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY IV. THE MESSAGE OF THE NON-CHRIS-
TIAN RELIGIONS.
"Wherefore should the nations say.
Where Is now their God?
But our God is in the heavens :
He hath done whatsoever he pleased.
Their idols are silver and gold.
The work of men's hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not;
Eyes have they, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their throat.
They that make them shall be like unto them;
Yea, every one that trusteth in them."
(Ps. cxv. 2-8.)
"And he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face
of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the
bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they
might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each
one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as
certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also his off-
spring." (Acts xvii. 26-28.)
PART II. THE GOD OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS.
(Continued.)
Turning from Mohammedanism to Hinduism, we imme-
diately come into an entirely different realm of thought.
Mohammed held to a God of distinct personality and com-
plete unity. While the Hindu religion from time to time
declares its God to be personal, it is a personality far differ-
ent from anything we know. He is the sole essence and
reality of the universe, the unity pervading all things. Be-
sides him there is no other reality. "There is no second
THE MESSAGE OF NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 63
outside of him, no other distinct from him/' is the set for-
mula of the Hindu faith. This does not mean that there is
no other god beside him; it means that there is no other
reality beside him.
There is in this conception the fundamental truth of the
unity of life, the interrelatedness of all being; but there is
the fundamental error of leaving out of account all human
personality. If there is no other besides God, then I am a
mere dream, a shadov/, a delusion. This being so, it is made
impossible for me to know that it is so ; for my friend, which
tells me it is so, is not real, has no existence. It should be
noted that the denial of the reality of sense impressions
plunges us into utter darkness as to finding truth, for all
our experience arises out of sense impressions and as such
is the basis of knowledge.
The Buddhist conception goes still farther and denies not
only the reality of man, but the reality of God. There is no
reality; all is change and decay and illusion. "It is an es-
sential doctrine," says Rhys Davids, perhaps the greatest
authority on Buddhism: "It is an essential doctrine, con-
stantly insisted upon in the original Buddhist texts and still
held, so far as I have been able to ascertain, by all Bud-
dhists, that there Is nothing, either divine or human, either
animal or vegetable or material, which is permanent. There
is no being ; there is only becoming."^
Personal Thought. — Reflect for a moment to-day on what
the value of religion would be to you if you were convinced
of the truth of the doctrine of these religions — that is, that
there is no such thing as a human person ; that you are sim-
ply deluded when you think you exist.
^Davids, "American Lectures," page 121.
64 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY IV. THE MESSAGE OF THE NON-CHRIS-
TIAN RELIGIONS.
"God maketh comparison between a slave, the property of his
Lord, who hath no power over anything, and a free man whom we
have ourselves supplied unto good supplies, and who giveth alms
therefrom both in secret and openly. Shall they be held equal?
No ; praise be to God ! But most men know it not." (The Koran,
Sura i6.)
"And as for thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, whom thou shalt
have ; of the nations that are round about you, of them shall ye buy
bondmen and bondmaids." (Lev. xxv. 44.)
PART III. VALUATION OF MAN IN THE NON-CHRISTIAN
RELIGIONS.
According to Islam, man is not akin to God ; he does not
partake of his nature and essence; neither, indeed, is such a
thing desirable. Man is the creature of God. He is abso-
lutely dependent upon his Creator in everything. While
theoretically he is a moral agent, practically he cannot be ;
for God has fixed his fate long before man comes into being.
One Mohammedan writer has put it thus :
When fate has come, man cannot it avert;
Fate fails not, should he mind and sight exert.
Beyond the Lord's decree, writ by his pen.
Nor less nor more comes to his servants, men.
This conception at once takes from man all his dignity
and worth. He is simply a puppet in the hands of an arbi-
trary God. The Hindu and Buddhist conception is far less
satisfactory. According to the former, man has no distinct
existence, but is simply an emanation from the divine, to
which he will sooner or later return. He is not responsible,
for whatever he does is the deed of the all-pervading God.
This at once cuts the nerve of all high endeavor. Buddhism
THE MESSAGE OF NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 6$
goes farther and denies man any existence whatever. Man
is simply a shadow; or, to be more exact, he is just the re-
sult of the stored-up energy of past deeds and desires. De-
sire, lust, longing — these are the efficient cause of existence.
If I do not put away all desire, when my being disintegrates,
another being must come into existence to live out the result
of the stored-up energy of my desire and deeds (karma).
The horror of life, therefore, is rebirth in another form, to
have new desires, only to give birth to a new existence.
Man, therefore, is a creature bound to the eternal round of
decay and rebirth in endless and monotonous succession.
Salvation, as v/e shall see later, is the getting free from this
wheel of destiny, the stopping of this monotonous succes-
sion of rebirths.
These conceptions do not dignify manhood. Hence In
these countries the common man is nothing; he is simply a
slave. Only the man who has fortune or some temporal
blessing can be worthy of notice. Man is valuable, not be-
cause of what he essentially is, but because of something he
possesses. As a result of such conceptions there is no social
uplift movement known in these countries. Man is not
worth lifting. No one needs spend energy on a delusion.
Crossing over the Yang-tse River at Hankow, China, one
morning I was amazed and horrified to learn that a little
girl who had fallen overboard from a house boat had been
allowed to drown. The fisherman near had said : * 'We do
not want her. She would be a care to us." Life in these
countries has no value, no worth, no sacredness. There are
no native asylums, no hospitals, no orphanages. The waste
life is thrown on the scrap heap without remorse.
Religions which have no more exalted ideas of man are
not apt to make provision for a very worthy salvation.
5
66 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY IV. THE MESSAGE OF THE NON-CHRIS^
TIAN RELIGIONS.
"Verily this is no other than a warning to all creatures,
To him among you who willeth to walk in a straight path.
But will it ye shall not, unless as God willeth it,
The Lord of the world." (The Koran, Sura 8i.)
"Happy are the believers who restrain their appetites, save with
their wives, or the slaves whom their right hands possess, for in that
case they shall be free from blame." (The Koran, Sura 23.)
"Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity.
And cleanse me from my sin,
For I know my transgressions ;
And my sin is ever before me.
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,
And done that which is evil in thy sight;
That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest,
And be clear w^hen thou judgest." (Ps. li. 2-4)
PART IV. CONCEPTION OF SIN IN THE NON-CHRISTIAN
RELIGIONS.
No non-Christian religion has such a note of personal sin
as that in the reference just quoted, Psalm li. 2-4.
Every religion, so far as I am aw^are, takes account of a
man's consciousness of sin — that is, recognizes that man is
out of harmony with his truer self and his environment.
The form which this conception of sin takes varies greatly.
The Mohammedan conception of sin is nearest to that of
Christianity. Here sin is a transgression of the will of God
and hence personal. The fundamental weakness of the con-
ception lies in the fact that this will of God is purely arbi-
trary and not necessarily in conformity to any fundamental
law of right or wrong. In other words, while Mohammedan
sin is personal, it is the transgression of the whimsical com-
mands of an arbitrary God. Thus, as a Mohammedan ex^
pressed it to a missionary: "If I use tobacco, God may
damn me; but if I murder or commit adultery, Cxod may be
merciful." This at once throws sin into the realm of arbi-
trary codes and does away with its most heinous aspect, the
nonconformity to a holy and loving will of a self -consistent
God.
THE MESSAGE OF NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 67
According to Hinduism, since there is no personal God,
there can be no such thing as nonconformity to his will ; so
sin in the Christian sense is unknown. Also, in view of the
fact that God is all and in all and nothing exists besides him,
all deeds are simply the deeds of the God and hence cannot
be sinful. There can be no such thing as personal transgres-
sion. In spite, however, of this philosophic unreality of sin,
the Hindu religion has much to say about it. Somehow the
sense of sin cannot be set aside. The chief sin is the affir-
mation of personal, separate existence. Thought of person-
ality is a delusion and an error out of which arises all suf-
fering. It is this which gives rise to karma (the influence
which lives on in a new birth), which condemns one to per-
petual rebirths.
"In India the great line of cleavage in the universe has
always run between the real and the unreal, rather than
between the right and the wrong.'*^
Buddhist sin is closely akin to that of Hinduism. Since
there is no such thing as permanent existence, either human
or divine, since all is change, the chief sin is to harbor the
delusion of personal existence. The first fetter which holds
man from entering the eightfold path of peace is sakkaya-
ditthi (the delusion of self).
From this very brief statement one immediately sees that
sin has no such terror for the non-Christian peoples as it has
for those of the Christian faith. Sin with them is error,
delusion, failure. With Christianity it is personal, willful
transgression. One would expect, therefore — and one is
not disappointed — that moral life would be at low ebb in all
these countries. In Christian countries one finds sin in spite
of our religion. In non-Christian countries much of the sin
exists because of the religious beliefs.
^Pratt, "Psychology of Religious Belief," page 90.
68 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY IV. THE MESSAGE OF THE NON-CHRIS-
TIAN RELIGIONS.
"Ye may divorce your wives twice: Keep them honorably or put
them away with kindness. . . . Fight for the cause of God, —
And kill them wherever ye shall find them— such the reward of infi-
dels." (The Koran, Sura 2.)
"And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God
gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are
not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covet-
ousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity;
whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful,
inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understand-
ing, covenant breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who,
knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practice such things are
worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them
that practice them." (Rom. i. 28-32.)
PART V. STANDARDS OF MORALITY IN NON-CHRISTIAN
RELIGIONS.
It cannot be doubted that the non-Christian religions have
many splendid moral precepts. We have paid little attention
to Confucianism in these studies, but here one ought to say
that the Confucian standard of morals is high. The Golden
Rule, though expressed negatively, the high reverence for
parents, the inculcation of virtue, courage, benevolence, loy-
alty — all these are splendid. But in Confucianism God is
ignored, woman is degraded, polygamy is sanctioned, and
no power is given whereby the other virtues may be attained.
China, leprous with sin and degradation, is a full and suffi-
cient answer to Confucian ethics as a final system.
Mohammedanism inculcates the highest reverence for
God, mercy to captives, charity to the needy, patience in
hardships, sobriety, and kindness. These are all well worth
while. But side by side with these precepts it inculcates the
most bitter cruelty to and persecution of nonbelievers ; slav-
ery is directly and positively sanctioned; lying to women is
justified; woman is degraded and made a tool of man's lust;
and even heaven itself is a land where man may have un-
numbered houris to minister to his debased passion. No one
who reads the Koran, much less any one who views the
THE MESSAGE OF NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 69
practical outcome of the Mohammedan code of morals, can
find any final standard there.
Hindu moral codes differ with the numerous sects; but,
on the whole, it may be said that all alike teach self-control,
truthfulness, and the sanctity of the marriage relation. The
most cultured sect, following the Bhagavad-Gita as their
sacred book, may be said to have a fair code of morals.
But no religion can pose as having a final standard for
morals which sets up in its temples carvings which are such
a travesty of morality and decency that no Christian woman
can visit the temple. Nor can it hope to have much moral
power when its gods in incarnate form are notorious as
thieves and licentious beyond measure and a part of its
sacred books must be condemned by the English government
as obscene literature.
In Buddhism there is the most utter confusion of essen-
tials and nonessentials. Thus sleeping on a trundle-bed is
put side by side with hatred, pride, and self-righteousness.
Morality is a code and not a principle. Not only so, but all
basis for morality is cut from beneath a Buddhist's feet ; for
he believes in neither self nor God, and there can be no
moral duty for either.
None of these religions can satisfy our sense of moral
life. They are the morals of a stationary code and cannot
meet the needs of growing life. They were valuable in their
day; but these peoples, with their belated sense of God, have
far outgrown their codes. A new dynamic is needed, and
Christianity can furnish that dynamic.
70
CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY IV. THE MESSAGE OF THE NON-CHRIS-
TIAN RELIGIONS.
"On couches ranged in rows shall they recline; and to the dam-
sels of large, dark eyes will we wed them." (The Koran, Sura 52,
spoken of future life.)
What grief
Springs of itself and springs not of desire?
Senses and things perceived mingle and light
Passion's quick spark of fire.
This is peace:
To conquer love of self and lust of life,
To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast.
To still this inward strife.
^Arnold's "The Light of Asia/*
PART VI. CONCEPTION OF SALVATION IN NON-CHRIS-
TIAN RELIGIONS.
By the word "salvation" we do not here refer specially to
future life. This is simply a resultant of salvation. Salva-
tion is what a religion proposes to do for us here and now.
In accordance with the Mohammedan idea of sin, as the
transgression of the arbitrary mandate of God — often with-
out regard to the fundamental conception of right and
wrong — the result of sin is disfavor, but not guilt. Sin does
not have the quality of guilt which it has for Christians.
Hence Mohammedan salvation is not forgiveness, but In-
dulgence; not freedom from guilt, but freedom from pun-
ishment. A man who still has a murderous heart may gain
entrance into Paradise if only God pleases to be indulgent.
Personal holiness is not inculcated as the goal for Moham-
medan character.
According to Hinduism, the supreme evil of life is this
embodied existence which continually returns in a new
THE MESSAGE OF NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 71
embodied form. To get rid of this round of rebirth, to get
away from embodied existence, to be reabsorbed into the
divine is the one conception of salvation. This can be at-
tained only by the complete denial of self, with all its desires
and passions. Hence salvation is the going out of the fires
of life.
Buddhism is much akin to this. It also seeks freedom
from embodied existence. It is necessary thereto that a man
extinguish all desire, all passion, all thought; then he will
pass out of this deluded state into Nirvana, the state where
he is at rest and without desire, without anxiety. Finally,
when this present embodied existence is dissolved, he will
simply be snuffed out; he will have attained extinction
(parra-nibana). This is final and complete salvation; it is
simply nihilism.
In these religions salvation is purely negative. It is free-
dom from some load, some punishment, some undesirable
state. There is nothing positive in it. It has no real con-
tent. It must be acknowledged that Christian salvation has
had too much of the idea of freedom from the pains of hell.
But this is perverted Christianity. Christ's salvation was
positive fellowship. Set this beside Buddha's extinction or
Hinduism's reabsorption into the divine, and we readily see
how barren the non-Christian conception is.
72 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY IV. THE MESSAGE OF THE NON-CHRIS-
TIAN RELIGIONS.
"For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made,
even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without
excuse: because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God,
neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their
senseless heart was darkened." (Rom. i. 20, 21.)
How many births are past, I cannot tell ;
How many births to come, no man can say.
But this alone I know, and know full well.
That pain and grief embitter all the way.
— South India Folk Song.
PART Vn. DO THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS
SATISFY?
We have very briefly set forth the non-Christian concep-
tions of God, man, sin, morality, and salvation; and we must
now ask in conclusion. Do these religions satisfy the souls
of men? "The religious problem," says Professor Knox,
*'is : Given man, dependent and ignorant, with feelings, fears,
hopes, hatreds, loves, in the midst of he knows not what
dangers and difficulties, how shall he be triumphant over
fear and sin and death? How shall he live in peace and
make existence not only endurable, but worthy? Thus,
though some may regret it, the direct and fundamental
proofs of our religion can be found only in its satisfaction
of the cravings of the soul and by its adaptation to the high-
est wants of society through Its ethical activities."^
Measured by these standards, do the non-Christian reli-
gions prove adequate? The supreme craving in every hu-
man soul Is for fellowship with a higher kindred power.
Browning has well voiced this hunger of the soul in his
splendid words in "Pauline" :
The last point I can trace is — rest beneath
Some better essence than itself, in weakness ;
This is "myself," not what I think I should be :
^"Direct and Fundamental Proofs of the Christian Religion/'
pages 156 and 173.
THE MESSAGE OF NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 73
And what is that I hunger for but God?
My God, my God, let me for once look on thee
As though naught else existed, we alone.
And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark
Expand till I can say: "Even from myself
I need thee, and I feel thee, and I love thee."
I do not plead my rapture in thy works,
For love of thee, nor that I feel as one
Who cannot die; but there is that in me
Which turns to thee, which loves or which should love.
Which one of the religions which we have discussed can
meet this test? Islam cannot; for its God is a capricious,
austere, absentee Ruler who cares naught for human life.
Buddhism cannot, for it denies the existence of any God at
all. Hinduism, though its contemplative method comes
nearer than any other, cuts off any final satisfaction; for
there cannot be any real communion, since there are no per-
sons to enter into that relationship. There is only one.
That is God ; and even he is not a person, but a vague, pan-
theistic essence that pervades the universe.
Those who have studied the peoples in the mission fields
know from observation that the souls of these men are hun-
gry. There is a great unrest, a great longing, which finds
no final satisfaction through the non-Christian faiths. That
these religions have value cannot be doubted, but that they
are not able to meet the needs of men is equally clear to any
student. This dissatisfaction is written large in the faces
of all whom one sees in these lands. There is an over-
anxious expression which none can miss. The non-Chris-
tian peoples have much of joy. They love their friends;
they have the love of their children; they are completely
human; but the deepest yearning of the soul is only par-
tially met. They know God but dimly and hence are unsat-
isfied.
STUDY V.
Modern Substitutes for Christianity.
76 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY V. MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR
CHRISTIANITY.
"For thus saith Jehovah unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and
ye shall live ; but seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not
to Beer-sheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel
shall come to nought. Seek Jehovah, and ye shall live ; lest he break
out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, and there be none
to quench it in Bethel. Ye who turn justice to wormwood, and cast
down righteousness to the earth, seek him that maketh the Pleiades
and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and
maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the
sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth (Jehovah is his
name); that bringeth sudden destruction upon the strong, so that
destruction cometh upon the fortress." (Amos v. 4-9.)
PART I. THEOSOPHY.
That we are living in a period of religious unrest, no one
can doubt who has given any thought to the ten or a dozen
forms of new faith which have found adherents in our
midst. As would be expected, most of these cults have some
truth which is worth retaining; and one should, so far as
possible, see what this truth is.
Closely related to the non-Christian religions or ethnic
faiths is the system of thought known as Theosophy. The
Theosophical Society was organized in New York in 1875,
and perhaps Madam Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant have been
among its most noted advocates. It claims to be the final
religion, the final science — in fact, the final wisdom. As a
cult it is esoteric — that is, only the initiated can understand
it fully. Its authority rests on a secret tradition which is
the special property and revelation of an advanced brother-
hood, who through successive incarnations have come to that
high stage where the secrets of the universe may be revealed
to them. Madam Blavatsky claims to have been associated
with this brotherhood in receiving her revelations.
Theosophy is closely related to Brahmanism, is purely
pantheistic, denies the personality of God, and says all ob-
jective reality is a temporary illusion. From the one over-
soul man proceeds and hither he returns. "The most that
can be said is that the absolute periodically differentiates
MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIANITY. yy
itself and periodically withdraws the differentiation into
itself." After this human existence has been dissolved, man
enters into a kind of heaven where he remains a longer or
shorter time, in accordance with his merits, and then is
ready for a reincarnation or rebirth. If he is ever able by
perfection of life to get freedom from the wheel of death
and rebirth, he then enters Nirvana or is reabsorbed into the
absolute.
While it cannot be denied that some of the Theosophists
have lived beautiful lives, nevertheless their system, like all
other forms of pantheism, cuts the true nerve of moral ac-
tion. If I am a part of God, then I cannot sin; for God,
being the all-pervasive, all-inclusive, all-perfect essence,
whatever I do he does, and hence I have no more responsi-
bility. It denies all reality to man, just as does Hinduism,
and hence takes all motive out of life. The mystical, con-
templative element in it has made an appeal to many restless
souls ; but this mystical element arises out of the fact that
man is a delusion, and his final salvation consists in getting
out of himself, as it were, finding out that he is a delusion,
and hence passing out of this shadowy existence. In no
such system can any permanent satisfaction be found. Ex-
tinction is not a goal worth working toward, and such a
religion is a poor incentive to life. It is pessimistic to the
core and gives no incentive to high endeavor.
78 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY V. MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR
CHRISTIANITY.
"When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out
of Egypt. The more the prophets called them, the more they went
from them : they sacrificed unto the Baalim, and burned incense to
graven images. Yet I taught Ephraim to walk ; I took them on my
arms ; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords
of a man, with bands of love ; and I was to them as they that lift up
the yoke on their jaws ; and I laid food before them." (Hos. xi. 1-4.)
"How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I cast thee off,
Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as
Zeboim? my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled
together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not
return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy
One in the midst of thee; and I will not come in wrath." (Hos.
xi. 8, 9.)
PART 11. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.
Perhaps Mrs. Eddy would resent her system's being put
close to Theosophy, but here it logically belongs. Christian
Science, too, owes part of its large influence to its Hinduistic
elements. Mrs. Eddy distinctly denies the personality of
God and says : "God is not a person ; God is principle." In
other words, her system borders on, or may be called, a type
of pantheism. She is in harmony with both Theosophy and
Hindu thought when she denies all reality to the sense world.
"Christian Science reveals incontrovertibly that mind is all
in all, that the only realities are the divine mind and idea.
God is the only intelligence of the universe, including man."
"There is no finite soul or spirit." "Matter will finally be
proven to be nothing but a mortal belief." "Matter and its
belief — sin, sickness, death — ^are states of mortal mind which
act, react, and then come to stop. They are not ideas, but
illusions." "Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death,
inasmuch as he derives his essence from God and possesses
not a single original or underived power." "Thus the long
tragedy which sin is supposed to have enacted in the world
turns out to have been only a deceptive dream."
It will at once be seen how close this comes to philosophic
Hinduism. God is all in all. He is the one essence. Man's
MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIANITY. 79
earthly state is pure delusion. In fact, man has no real and
separate existence. There is, therefore, no solid foundation
for morality, no good or final development, not even any sure
basis for knowledge, since all sense impressions are mere
delusions. The system is full of contradictions. It resents
being called pantheistic, and yet denies all personality to God
and makes man a kind of emanation of the divine. It holds
that God is love ; but one wonders how love can be an attri-
bute of a completely impersonal element.
Into her system Mrs. Eddy has incorporated the power
of suggestion in curing physical ills; and that she and her
followers have wrought many marvelous cures, no one need
deny. The system has rightly called attention to the close
relation of the mind to the body and also to the fact that
any real religion should have reference to well-being in this
life as well as in the life to come. It undoubtedly has helped
some people and has struck at that otherworldliness which
has at times been the bane of Christianity.
But these virtues do not explain away the inconsistencies
or make it a tenable system for a thoughtful mind. Pro-
fessor Leuba's lame defense of this doctrine of the unreality
of matter as identical with idealism seems to me wide of the
mark. Concrete idealism does not deny matter, but claims
that it is not opposed to, but, as it were, a manifestation of,
spirit. Christian Science has value neither as Christianity
nor as science and must sooner or later run its course.
8o CHRISTIAN UFE—A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY V. MODERX SUBSTITUTES FOR
CHRISTIANITY.
*nie \6^ mocmtams are for the wild goats ;
Tbe rocks are a refnge for tlie conies.
He appointed tbe moon for seascms :
The Sim knovedi his going down.
Thoa *";^ 1"* s fr darkness, and it is yiigfit^
Wherein all the beasts of the forest creep forth.
The jono^ hoos roar after their prey.
And seek their food frooi God.
The stm riseth, they get them awajr.
And laj them down in their dens.
Man goeth forth imto his work
And to his labor tmtil the erening.
O Jehovah, bow manifold are tfaf works !
In wisdom hast thoa made tfaem aU:
The earth is full of thy richer" (Ps. civ. 18-24.)
?>-?- ::i PESSIMISM.
ANOTHER cult which 15 closely related to the Oriental re-
ligions is that of PessimisttL Both Schopenhauer and Von
Ifartman were in deep sympathy with certain elements of
Buddhism. According to Schopenhauer, the world is the
esqM-ession of will, and bad will or blind will at that The
will as unsatisfied striving creates the world. This world,
he claims, is the worst possible world. Thought is not per-
manent, since it is a mere fimction of the brain. There is,
therefore, no possible immortality, since when the thought
vanishes with the brain there is no personality to be immor-
taL Life is taken up with the purstiit of happiness, which
may never be attained; hence life is a failure. There is
much more of evil in the world than there is of good. Man
is worthless and deserves no better than he gets.
Plunged into so deep a sea of pessimism as this, the one
recourse was to find an exit from existence. This both
Schopenhauer and Von Hartman found in the Buddhistic
doctrine of extinction. Pessimism accepts one substance or
being, which is impersonal, of which all souls are simply
emanations. Here it is hardly at one with Buddhism, but in
the fact of widespread misery and suffering the two systems
come together again. Like Buddhism, Pessimism finds re-
lief through extinction.
MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIANITY. 8l
As a philosophy and as a religion, Pessimism is a failure.
No man can be expected to strive much in a world when all
is against him. If all is predetermined beforehand and is
bad, what use to strive for that which is good? If, fur-
thermore, final extinction is the ultimate hope, there is no
hope at all. The mind refuses to rest in such a system.
Again, Schopenhauer's system breaks down because he
makes unsatisfied striving the essence of evil. But is it?
Would complete satiety be blessedness? An ox that has fed
and drunk and lies down to rest is a perfect ox ; but not so
of man. His very manhood reveals itself in its striving.
To be completely satisfied w^ould be stagnation, and that
means death. It is of the nature of spiritual life that it ever
aspires. So that Schopenhauer's thesis of perpetual striving,
instead of being a basis for Pessimism, is the proof of the
divine within man.
Poor vaunt of life indeed
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men ;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed
beast?
Rejoice we are allied
To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive !
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives than of His tribes that take. I must believe.
What I aspired to be
And was not comforts me.
A brute I might have been ; but would not sink in the scale.
— Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra."
Optimism arises not out of overlooking the evil and suf-
fering of life, but springs from the belief that God is bring-
ing all life to higher perfection. This life is a training
ground, and our desires and struggles are but teachers of
larger life. It bases itself on the belief that through the uni-
verse "one increasing purpose runs." On the whole, human-
ity has found it impossible to accept any other than an op-
timistic theory of life. Pessimism gets us nowhere, and we
will not follow a blind alley.
6
82 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY V. MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR
CHRISTIANITY.
"That they should seek God, if haply they might feel after hini
and find him, though he is not far from each one of us : for in him
we live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your own
poets have said, For we are also his offspring." (Acts xvii. 27-29.)
PART IV. POSITIVISM, THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY.
According to this theory of life, a mother holding a child
in her arms is the symbol of real religion. August Compte
set aside a personal God and put in his place a kind of deified
humanity, a great being. He claimed that religion must
have two roots : First, the belief in a universal being, and,
secondly, the belief in immortality. Since he could not ac-
cept a personal God, he found his supreme being in a deified
humanity. Since he could not believe in the continuity of
the individual after death, he found his immortality in that of
the race. The aim of Comte was to bring about through his
new religion a social ideal. He claimed that humanity was
suffering from an overemphasis on individualism; and that
to turn man's thought away from himself would not only
benefit society, but also the individual.
Fauerbach claimed that humanity is actually the object of
all religious worship, since our God is only the anthropo-
morphic formation of our own desires and needs. He
claimed that there was no objective reality corresponding to
our conception of God, save as it could be found in human-
ity itself. Hence to him the setting up of humanity as our
object of worship was bringing religion in touch with reality.
George Eliot is perhaps the best literary exponent of
this system. To her it became an enthusiasm; and while
not in complete agreement with Comte, she has done much
to popularize his theory. The central idea of her religion
was not faith in God, but faith in man. Savonarola repri-
mands Romola for trying to run away from suffering. *Tf
your own people are wearing a yoke," he says to her, "will
you slip from under it instead of struggling with them to
lighten it?" George Eliot called men to renounce self for
the sake of a larger humanity. This is good if sufficiently
motived by a humanity which has the Godhood within it.
MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIANITY. 83
Immortality was the share each person could have in build-
ing a larger race. This also is good, provided all progress
gained can be permanently kept.
May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
— Eliot's "O May I Join the Choir Invisible!"
The value of this theory is to bring us back to earth and
socialize our lives.
This thing is all very beautiful; but the trouble is, on the
positivistic basis, taking all Godhood out of man, it is not
true. First of all, there is no such thing as an idealized hu-
manity. This is a pure fiction. Humanity is far from ideal-
ized, and that it can lift itself by its own boot straps is the
wildest dream. In setting aside man's relation to a divine
power, the Positivists remove all hope of humanity's ever
reaching an ideal state. Neither is humanity permanent so
far as this world is concerned. Science holds that many
centuries hence this world will be a burned-out cinder, and
life upon it must be snuffed out. Hence humanity in the
state we know it now, as a collection of individual beings,
will ultimately be no more. An idealized humanity would,
therefore, be a god of time and not of eternity and our reli-
gion a temporary makeshift by which we could delude our-
selves into a temporary enjoyment of life. Immortality of
the race is a figment, since when the last human being leaves
this form of existence all the struggles of the human soul
for character are thrown away. There will be no world in
which gladness shall be music, and all the practice of the
choir will have been useless. "The religion of humanity,"
said Frederick Harrison, '*'is simply morality fused with so-
cial devotion and enlightened by sound philosophy." But
this is just where this religion breaks down. It neither has
a sound philosophy nor does it offer to men a sufficiently
permanent and valuable humanity to command our fullest
devotion. I will not devote myself completely to a mere
passing puppet, however well dressed and well trained that
puppet may appear. Any humanity which is a bare human-
ity, bereft of a divine element, is finally a puppet show.
84 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY V. MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR
CHRISTIANITY.
"Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth
us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and
dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the
Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not
that I am in the Father, and the Father in me ? the words that I say
unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me
doeth his works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father
in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake." (John xiv.
8-II.)
"All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no
one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the
Father, save the Son,^ and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to
reveal him." (Matt. xl. 27.)
PART V. THEISM, A CHRISTLESS CHRISTIANITY.
It has become more or less popular to say that we believe
in God, but we do not need Christ to interpret God. That
the Jews had a noble religion and that they knew God, no
one denies. That there are adherents of Mohammedanism
who know God, one cannot doubt. But do they know God
in his fullness? and are we satisfied with their less perfect
knowledge ? On the other hand, there are many, both Jews
and Christians, who are reading into God all the qualities
which Christ came to reveal and then are saying that they do
not need Christ, for their God has the same value to them as
our Christlike God. It is fair, however, to ask where they
got their conception of God.
At the University of Nebraska a Jewish student stood
along with a number of others who were thus indicating
their quiet decision to give themselves to the Christian life.
After the service the Jewish student came and asked if
I thought he was right. He said he did not believe in
Christ as the Messiah, but he believed in him as the greatest
prophet. I then began to ask him about his conception of
God. I found that he believed in the same kind of a loving
Father that I trust and worship. His God was not the con-
ception of Jehovah in the Old Testament, but the Heavenly
Father of the New Testament. He was reading into his
MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIANITY^ 85
Jehovah all the attributes which Christ came to make known.
For this I am thankful. Only I tried to make clear to my
inquirer that it was hardly fair to incorporate into one's life
all the message of the Christ life and yet deny the historical
fact whence that message draws authority and power.
Christ is not another God. Those who worship him are not
dualists. This unitarian emphasis has had the benefit of
bringing us to realize that we do not go to Christ instead
of God, but we go to God through Christ. "He that hath
seen me hath seen the Father."
This does not mean that the Hindu does not have access
to God simply because he has not heard of Christ. It means
that his conception of God is less full and rich. It is in this
sense that no man can come unto God save through Christ.
If a man can only count ten, he is shut off from the further
reaches of mathematics. And if a man has only had dim
revelations of God, he has not come to God In his fullness.
The doctrine of Christ is not the denial of any light that any
man may have. It is simply the promise and fulfillment of
a truer light to all who will through him come unto the
Father. To cast aside Christ as unnecessary and unreason-
able simply because all men have not heard of him is just
as foolish as to cast aside all mathematical formulas simply
because an African savage can only count ten. Not only
so, but to say that one owes no debt to Christ in coming to
God is on a par with saying that the savage counting ten
can arrive at full mathematical knowledge without the inter-
vening formulas.
Christ is a historical fact, and we read God in the light of
that fact. One can no more read the full character of God
without the historical fact than we can have light without
the candle which emits it.
By all means let every man put into his conception of
God all the richness which he can find from any source, but
let him not deny the source from which that richness springs.
86 CHRISTIAN. LIFE—A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY V. MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR
CHRISTIANITY.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through him; and without him was not any-
thing made that hath been made. . . . And the light shineth in
the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not." (John i. 1-5.)
"There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man,
coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was
made through him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his
own, and they that were his own received him not. But as many as
received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God,
even to them that believe on his name : who were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And
the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory,
glory as of the only-begotten from the Father), full of grace and
truth." (John i. 9-14.)
PART VI. ECLECTICISM.
In the midst of the confusion of faiths the Japanese have
thought they could compound a new religion out of all the
best elements of the various religions. Accordingly, many a
Japanese will tell you that he is neither a Buddhist, a Shin-
toist, nor a Christian ; but he is all in one. A similar move-
ment arose in New England in the last half of the last cen-
tury. A prominent educator of the East has recently es-
poused a new religion bordering on some such theory of
religious values. The Religion of Reason during the French
Revolution was a movement in the same direction. But this
French religion was not able to make much progress. One
of its representatives, feeling that they had incorporated into
it every good element of all religions, was at a loss to know
why it did not win more adherents. Accordingly, he asked
Talleyrand what was necessary to make this religion a suc-
cess. It is said that the old diplomat replied: "I should
advise you to get yourself crucified and rise from the dead
on the third day."
This strikes at the very heart of the difficulty. Religion
is not a theory, it is a fellowship; and to be a fellowship
there must be loving persons on both sides.
MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIANITY. Sy
"As the nutritive elements of the soil cannot be made to
minister to life and movement by being brought together
and can fulfill that function only when taken up by a living
organism already present, so religious truths cannot be com-
bined into a living whole by a mere process of juxtaposition.
A living religion sufficiently comprehensive in its fundamen-
tal principles can be hospitable toward truths found any-
where in the limits of the accessible universe ; but the simple
compiling of the truths will not make a religion endowed
with victorious energy."^
Principles in themselves have no transforming power. It
is life that transforms; and a religion that is simply a com-
pilation of principles is useless. What the human race wants
and needs is great purposes and principles incarnated into a
person. This no eclectic religion can furnish. If the eclec-
tics are to make a successful religion, they will not have the
simple task of compiling elemental religious truths ; but they
must create outright a God who incarnates them all.
^Sheldon, "Unbelief in the Nineteenth Century," pages 216, 217.
88 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY V. MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR
CHRISTIANITY.
"There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in
Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made
me free from the law of sin and of death. For what the law could
not do, in that "it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the
flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after
the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the
Spirit the things of the Spirit." (Rom. viii. 1-5.)
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through him; and without him was not any-
thing made that hath been made. . . . And the light shineth in
the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not." (John i. 1-5.)
PART VII. THE ETHICAL CULTURE MOVEMENT.
This is not essentially a religion, but a declaration that
supernatural religion is unnecessary to life. It is closely
akin to Positivism in that it makes an idealized humanity the
object of its endeavor, and it is related to Eclecticism in that
its moral code is an attempted compilation of all the best
elements of moral truth to be found. Felix Adler, the
founder of this movement, in his book on "The Religion of
Duty," says that we cannot get our religion from authority —
by which he means the Bible — we cannot get it from philos-
ophy; we cannot get it from science. "All really religious
persons will agree that religion is primarily a matter of ex-
perience/'^
The central element in that experience is spirit. By this
he does not mean what he calls ghosts or what he calls a
universal world ghost — a god. By spirit he means a "non-
material something" which dwells in us. This spirit is a
kind of all-pervasive essence in which the human race is
united. "The very idea of spirit is that of unity expressing
itself in plurality and of endless differences fused together
in an all-embracing unity."^ The indwelling spirit is not
^Adler, "The Religion of Duty," page 8. ''Ihid., page 15.
MODERN SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIANITY. 89
something personal, but, on the contrary, decidedly imper-
sonal. It is the common feeling we have for others, the bond
of unity between man and man. It is, therefore, the world
gj-ound of all true morality. Hence morality is of the very
nature and constitution of man. It is the essence of the uni-
verse, and in response to morality one finds himself in har-
mony with the universe. This universal, all-pervasive spirit
is a kind of cosmic urge, or universal impulse, pushing all
humanity forward to a higher and truer destiny. Inasmuch
as this spirit pervades all men to a greater or less degree, it
gives dignity to all human beings.
This movement has two definite contributions to make.
First, it lends sacredness and dignity to all life and brings
all men into a common brotherhood. Secondly, it puts em-
phasis on moral action as the very essence and meaning of
life. It thus checks up all religions on their moral content
and justly calls them to make their practice as good as their
creed.
But the weakness of the ethical culture movement lies in
its failure to explain this cosmic urge. How does it come
that the heart of the universe is moral? How does it hap-
pen that in adjusting ourselves to this all-pervasive, imper-
sonal spirit we find ourselves acting morally ? There cannot
be any explanation save that this all-pervasive, impersonal
spirit is moral. But here we have a contradiction of terms.
Whatever is moral is personal, if language means anything.
Things, essences, impersonal entities do not have morality
ascribed to them. Hence the ethical culturist must either
cease to call his "spirit" moral or must impute to it some
kind of personality. Now, if it be personal spirit, then we
have no new theory, for Christianity has for centuries taught
that the Spirit of God within the soul urges men on to moral
endeavor. This same Spirit has united men into a common
brotherhood and has given a high and dynamic motive for
brotherly action or morality.
It would appear, therefore, that if ethical culture is really
new, its philosophy is not true; and if there is truth in its
philosophy, it really is nothing new.
STUDY VI.
A Personal God.
92 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VI. A PERSONAL GOD.
"Then Jehovah answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
Who is this that darkeneth counsel
By words without knowledge?
Gird up now thy loins like a man;
For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ?
Declare, if thou hast understanding.
Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest ?
Or who stretched the line upon it?
Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened?
Or who laid the corner stone thereof,
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
(Job xxxviii. 1-7.)
PART I. MODERN SCHOLARSHIP AND A PERSONAL GOD.
In our modern time some have feared lest the advance of
science would drive God out of the universe. The supposed
conflict between science and religion is not so acute now as
formerly, but there are still those who feel that there is con-
flict. Let us see. Science proceeds on the assumption of
the uniformity and the universality of law. It assumes that
a rock dropped here or in China or anywhere else on the
earth will fall to the ground — that is, the law of attraction
of bodies is uniform and universal. But what is the deeper
meaning of this fact of uniformity? Does it not mean es-
sential unity? If I should go into the customhouse of a
city and see the clock set itself just at twelve, then on anoth-
er day go into the courthouse and see the clock there set
itself just at twelve in the same fashion, I would, if I were
a thoughtful man, begin to wonder what the meaning of this
uniformity could be. I think I would come to the conclusion
that these clocks were unified either by common device and
design, or else they were connected up somewhere to a cen-
tral clock — that is, I would conclude that uniformity of ac-
tion meant some kind of unity. I would probably find that
they were all connected up with the Western Union and
hence were really unified.
Now, the thoughtful man sees that there is a law of uni-
formity throughout the universe. This does not just hap-
A PERSONAL GOD. 93
pen. A self-running universe is a fiction of muddy thinking.
There is somewhere a unifying element, a something that
grips up all forces into itself and makes them one. Science
calls this force. Hartley said that it was a very mysterious
force, and so it seems to me ; but at least it is unity. There
are not a thousand or a hundred or even two supreme ele-
ments in the universe. The whole is unified, else there would
be cross purposes and utter confusion. Then there could be
no science. Science, therefore, gives us unity. This is not
God, but it certainly does not deny God. The Christians
claim that God unifies all life, that he is the supreme force
in the universe. Science does not deny this. Indeed, it
looks in this direction, but cannot go so far.
Again, science proceeds on the assumption that life is a
process; that nothing is, but all things are becoming; that
all things are moving toward a goal, be that goal good or bad.
The law of evolution says that there is uniformity of pro-
cedure. Even the so-called jumps of nature are uniform in
action and come about in accordance with fixed law. But
when science says there is uniformity, progress, movement
toward a goal, it says there is intelligence ; for nothing save
intelligence can have purpose. Blind force and purpose be-
long to two unrelated fields. They cannot be put together.
Hence science, as pure science, says there is a unifying
element which knits all life into one unity, and this unity is
shot through with intelligence. This is not God, but it does
not contradict him.
94 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY VI. A PERSONAL GOD.
"The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament showeth his handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech,
And night unto night showeth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language;
Their voice is not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber.
And rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course.
His going forth is from the end of the heavens.
And his circuit unto the ends of it;
And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."
(Ps. xix. 1-6.)
PART II. MODERN SCHOLARSHIP AND A PERSONAL
GOD.
(Continued.)
The very definite and decided tendency in philosophy is
tov^ard personalism. The old form of crass materialism has
lost its hold. No one now believes that the higher states of
consciousness can be evolved out of sheer matter. Pure
idealism has likev^ise passed. We cannot deny the existence
of matter. To define it as a delusion of our senses is sheer
nonsense, for it cuts the nerve of all true thought and makes
knowledge impossible. Therefore we must say that matter
and spirit are somehow akin. They are not absolutely op-
posed to each other. The personalistic philosophy claims that
material is the manifestation or embodiment of idea. Now,
thought incarnated is person; and so philosophy to-day is
looking toward personalism as the ultimate meaning of the
universe. "Unless, then," says Dr. Bowne, "appearances are
unusually deceitful in this case, it is plain that man is no im-
potent annex to a self-sufficient mechanical system, but is
rather a very significant factor in cosmic ongoings, at least
in terrestrial ongoings.'* And proceeding further he says :
"A world of persons with a Supreme Person at the head is
the conception to which we come as the result of our critical
reflection."^
^Bowne, "Personalism," page 279.
A PERSONAL GOD. 95
"But" objects a student who came to me recently, "how-
can God be infinite and yet personal ? Does not personality
limit him?'' That depends on your conception of personal-
ity. 'These, then," says lUingworth, *'are the constituent
elements of personality as such — self-consciousness, the
power of self-determination, and the desire which insistently
impels us into communion with other persons — or, in other
words, reason, will, and love/'^
A person is a spirit which is conscious of itself in all its
differentiations. If we think of human personality, it cer-
tainly would limit God. But we must remember that no
human being is completely personal. We are just growing
toward personality and are far from complete. We have a
little intelligence. We know that we can find some truth,
even though we often conceive falsely. We have some love
power; for we know that we love our mothers and our
friends, even though we often go astray in our emotional
life. We have a little will; for we do choose right part of
the time, even though we choose falsely often. Growth in
personality is growth in fullness and accuracy of these fac-
ulties. All education is to help us know right, respond
rightly to that knowledge, and act right when we know and
feel. It is not impossible to conceive of a personality in
which the knowing faculty is complete, in which there is
right response to all life, and in which all choices are right
and true. Here would be a perfect person, an unlimited per-
son — that is, unlimited in the realm of personal life. The
fact that one person has all the powers, emotions, and quali-
ties of all his friends and his own besides does not limit him.
He does not become less personal because he is not set over
against his friends. If God contains all the attributes of hu-
manity and nature, as well as all that our imperfect natures
point toward, he is not thereby limited, nor is he less personal.
Dr. W. N. Clarke defines a perfect person as "the being in
whom these essential powers which constitute personality
(intelligence, affection, and will) exist in perfect quality
and degree and are perfectly bound together and welded in
use in the unity of self -directing consciousness." Such a
conception is not impossible, and such a conception ap-
proaches the idea of a personal God. It is poor and barren
compared with what God must be, but it does not limit God.
^Illingworth, "Personality, Human and Divine," page 38,
96 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VI. A PERSONAL GOD.
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal
life. For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world;
but that the world should be saved through him." (John iii. i6, 17.)
PART III. THE CHARACTER OF GOD.
If we are to have a God whom we can worship, his char-
acter must be self-consistent and good ; otherwise he would
be a monster whom we might fear, but whom we could
never worship. No sooner do we come to consider this
phase of God's nature than the problem of evil rises up to
confuse us. If God is good, how does it happen that evil is
prevalent and at times seems to be triumphant? If evil is
separate from God and not amenable to God, then we have a
dual universe, which science will not permit us to believe.
If, on the other hand, God is supreme, how can we reconcile
the continued existence of evil in the world with our con-
ception of his benevolence? This is the age-long problem,
which can never be completely solved, but which we can in
a measure come to justify.
The purpose of life is training, as we shall show in a later
chapter. But training in moral character can come only
through overcoming obstacles and through moral choice.
In a world where every obstacle was removed and in which
one could not help doing the right there would be no real
morality. Character could never be developed in such a
place. "Tell me, now," says Browning, "what were the
bond 'twixt man and man, dost judge, pain once abolished?"
In his poem entitled "Rephan" Browning sets forth clearly
that life without battles would be a dead calm where no
character could be born. Life in such a place would be un-
bearable, and one would be glad to get to a world where
struggle was and victory was possible.
"You divine the test.
When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast
A voice said: "So wouldst thou strive, not rest?
Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,
Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth?
Thou art past Rephan ; thy place be earth !"
A PERSONAL GOD. 97
Instead, therefore, of its being impossible to reconcile a
good God with a world of conflict, it would be impossible to
conceive of God as good in a struggleless world ; for a God
who would shut me up to dead indifference would rob me of
the chance of character and hence be immoral. We have no
praise for the parent who so smooths the path of the child
as to rob the child of all endeavor, for thereby he robs the
child of character. Precisely this is the danger of all luxury
and ease : it makes people soft and spineless. No good God
will treat me thus. We cannot make God less benevolent
than our standard for parenthood. It is easier to justify
the existence of evil in the presence of a good God than it
would be to believe in a good God in the absence of any
chance for character.
Kant, in his critique of practical reason, said that there
was an oughtness in the human soul, a sense of duty which
gave meaning to all morality. "But,'* said Kant, "if this
oughtness is not in harmony with the spirit of the universe,
I am opposed to the universe and must be ground to pow-
der." He felt it absolutely essential, therefore, to posit the
goodness of the universal order. We must believe that God
is good or else plunge into absolute pessimism, which denies
all morality.
On the hypothesis of a God without goodness, man's good-
ness would be the highest and the best in existence. But we
all know that man's goodness is very partial. If, therefore,
God is not good, there is no final goodness, and the world is
incomplete. There is failure written at the very heart of
things. All my striving for right is a failure, because there
is no final standard. All morality is a chaos, my own moral
nature a misfit and a lie. Again, we are plunged into com-
plete pessimism, which ends in a blind alley. This human
nature cannot and will not accept.
While we may not escape the difficulty of this problem,
we at least can rest sure of this, that a universe such as we
have is far more reasonable on the hypothesis of a God who
is good than on any other basis ; and if we are to be really
scientific, we will act on the most reasonable hypothesis.
We can no more prove God than we can prove the existence
of a substance called ether; but we must accept both in order
to reconcile the facts of experience.
7
98 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VI. A PERSONAL GOD.
"For as many as have sinned without the law shall also perish
without the law : and as many as have sinned under the law shall be
judged by the law; for not the hearers of the law are just before
God, but the doers of the law shall be justified; (for when Gentiles
that have not the law do by nature the thingsof the law, these, not
having the law, are a law unto themselves; in that they show the
work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing
witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or
else excusing them)." (Rom. ii. 12-15.)
PART IV. THE MEANING OF GOD TO DAILY LIFE.
Most men do not deny God. They simply fail to see that
he has any meaning for their daily lives. To them God is a
being far removed from the earth, who dwells apart from
men. Christ, on the other hand, conceived of God as a Fa-
ther deeply interested in his children and having daily con-
tact with them.
If God is a Person, as we have seen there is reason to
believe he is, then it is possible to have personal fellowship
with him. In an earlier study we tried to show that Chris-
tian life is just this companionship with God and that this
companionship is normal.
This at once dignifies all life. I measure myself and am
measured by others on the basis of my companionships.
Noble companionships dignify life. A student friend of
mine was invited to ride with President Roosevelt in his
private car across my friend^s native State. The friends of
this college man never ceased to talk about this honor done
him. His life was at once dignified by his friendship with a
strong personality. This is a weak illustration of what God
does for us. By giving us access to his life he at once dig-
nifies our persons ; he makes us bigger and better men.
Again, this Christian conception of God as a Person gives
basis for universal religion. If religion were initiation into
an occult system of knowledge, as the systems of India de-
clare, some men would be incapable of being religious. If
religion were living according to set formula or creed, then
no man could be religious until he knew that formula. Even
A PERSONAL GOD. 99
If religion were a specific type of emotional response, then
some races and some individuals of every race might find
themselves incapable of such emotional response and might
be cut off from religious life. But since religion is fellow-
ship with God and God is a Person, then all men of every
grade of intelligence and of every temperament can enter
this fellowship. The fact that we are personal means that
we can enter into fellowship with persons. Hence religion
is a universal possibility — indeed, broadly speaking, it is a
universal fact. Jesus called men away from an external
and formalistic religion to an inward and personal religion,
a religion of personal fellowship.
This Christian conception of God as a Person further
means that all men may receive from God help in their
every hour of need. The greatest power in the world is
not electricity or steam or any other form of physical force.
No amount of physical force can change a man*s disposi-
tion or his spirit or his attitude. Only personal influence
can do this. The stronger the personality, the surer will be
fiis influence upon us. Henry Drummond once said: "I
become a part of every man I meet, and every man I meet
becomes a part of me." There is no more certain fact of
scientific research than this fact of the influence of one per-
son upon another. If, therefore, God is a person and we
will use these laws of personal association, we can have our
lives transformed by his presence. To help us in our every
need God does not have to dip into the universe, as it were,
and change all the laws of nature.
If I can so strengthen the character of my friend that he
can care for his own physical welfare, I have served him
more really than if I had furnished food and clothes all his
life. If God through direct contact with our souls can equip
us to live, he has met the fundamental need of our lives.
This God does and is doing day by day.
100 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VI. A PERSONAL GOD.
"Surely the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, except he reveal his
secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared; who
will not fear? The Lord Jehovah hath spoken; who can but proph-
esy?" (Amos iii. 7, 8.)
"For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that
speaketh in you." (Matt. x. 20.)
PART V. CAN GOD SPEAK TO MEN?
But some object that we cannot come to know God. Ac-
cording to Herbert Spencer, God, as the Absolute, is un-
known and unknowable. To think is to condition or limit
objects; it is to set them over against what they are not.
But to think the absolute or unconditioned would be to
think the unthinkable. This was Mr. Spencer's contention,
and there is considerable disposition on the part of some
modern writers to take his attitude. Felix Adler seriously
asks: "Can we form any conception of the kind of being
capable of governing these tremendous forces, of overlook-
ing this interminable wilderness of worlds? Can the anal-
ogy of human intelligence give the least clue to the nature
of such a being ?"^ And yet in this very same chapter Adler
gives a lot of clues to his nature when he says that "it tends
to back up moral efforts" or that it is "a power outside our-
selves which cooperates in the attainment of moral ends."
"I believe that there is a higher Being, an ultimate divine
Reality in things." He at least is saying that this Being has
morality and effective will. That is something.
Mr. Spencer and his followers, down to and including the
modern ethical culturist, say that we cannot know God and
then proceed to describe him. We must not forget that all
knowledge is relative. That is Mr. Spencer's contention.
Thought about a thing delimits it by setting over against it
what it is not; but we cannot think of the delimited object
without at the same time thinking of that which limits it.
We cannot think of the North Pole without at the same time
setting it over against the South Pole, by which process we
are of necessity forced to think of the South Pole. No man
* — ■■
^Adler, "The Religion of Duty," page 37.
'A PERSONAL GOD. lOI
can conceive of a stick with only one end. When he thinks
of one end, he sets it over against another end. So when I
think of a finite being Uke myself, by the very necessity of
thought I set finitude over against infinitude.
The fact that I have to think of the infinite in terms of
the finite does not mean that the conception of the infinite is
completely false. All knowledge must be expressed in terms
of my own experience; and while that experience may be
relatively incomplete, it is, nevertheless, true so far as it
goes. Take this away from me, and I can have no knowl-
edge whatever. I could not even know that I do not know.
It is not only religion, but all knowledge, which is of neces-
sity anthropomorphic.
Herbert Spencer recognized the inconsistency of his the-
sis, for he acknowledges : "Though the absolute cannot in
any manner or degree be known in the strict sense of know-
ing, yet we find that its positive existence is a necessary da-
tum of consciousness and that so long as consciousness con-
tinues we cannot for an instant rid it of this datum."^
The real thing which men mean when they say that we
cannot know God is that we cannot handle him or see him
or demonstrate his existence as we deal with scientific facts.
Neither can I see or feel or demonstrate your personality
nor my own. No man can prove his own existence, for the
first step in the proof would be to assume his personality as
the tool with which he would set to work to make the proof.
But, although I cannot see your personality, I can know it.
Every man does know his friends, and to try to argue him
out of his belief in this knowledge is the sheerest folly. He
knows them, not by scientific experiment, but by personal
association. I know a person, not by finding out where he
was born or how old he is, not by facts about him, but by
living in the presence of his spirit. This is the one way of
knowing a person; and this way is just as trustworthy, just
as real, just as certain as is science in its own field.
God being a Person, we must know him through personal
association. This method is as vital, as real, as trustworthy
as any scientific method. God can be known. He can com-
municate himself to me, just as my friend can make his
impress on me.
^Spencer, "First Principles," page 29.
102 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VI. A PERSONAL GOD.
"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for
they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain
mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God."
(Matt. V. 6-8.)
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou
hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no
priest to me : seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I also
will forget thy children." (Hos. iv. 6.)
"If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching,
whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself." (John vii.
17.)
PART VI. CONDITIONS OF KNOWING GOD.
If it is reasonable to believe that God can make himself
known, then we cannot escape the conviction that he will
make himself known to his children. No good and loving
father would refuse to speak to his children. "Self-expres-
sion is of the essence of personality." It is impossible to
think of personality separated from a desire to make itself
known. At least one of the great activities of God's life is
that of self-expression. This is not an abstract term. A
person cannot express itself in vacuo. Real expression
means revelation; it means communication of self to some
one else. We must conclude, therefore, that God is contin-
ually trying to reveal himself to all men. If men have not
heard his voice, it is because their ears are dull. That all
men have heard something of God's message is proved by
the fact of universal religion. All religions, however per-
verted, are the standing proof that men have caught some
faint message from God; for religion, as Dr. Tiele puts it,
springs from the consciousness of God within the human
soul.
What, then, are the conditions of God's message being
heard? What is inspiration? Inspiration is man's side of
the process of intercommunication, of which revelation is
God's side. The first condition of a moral revelation must
be moral character. There must be likeness of character in
order that there may be intercommunication. A man who
A PERSONAL GOD. I03
is reeking with crime can scarcely understand the speech
of a pure man who talks of unselfish love, much less can he
fully understand God. All men have some moral impulse in
them; and it is by the cultivation of this, through response
to God's will, that a man grows in capacity to understand
God. Revelation is a growth; it is progressive. The more
I give myself to God, the more is he able to make himself
known to me ; and the more he makes himself known to me,
the more am I willing to give myself to him. It is recipro-
cal action.
Inspiration may, therefore, be described as the process of
character growth, by which a man becomes capable of re-
ceiving messages from God. Revelation is the message
which comes to man in consequence of this process of prep-
aration.
If we are not hearing God's voice progressively, it is be-
cause we are not progressively preparing to hear it and lis-
tening to it. The law of all thought growth is that we shall
act on what we know. We must live to our best daily in
order that to-morrow there may be a better knowledge pos-
sible. God can speak only to those who are willing to hear
and who by habitual hearing have prepared themselves to
hear more clearly.
A so-called special revelation would, therefore, not be
miraculous. It would follow the normal law of preparation.
It would mean that one person or one group of persons had
lived in such harmony with God that they were able to catch
more of God's message thcin others. Why should we think
this strange or impossible? We accept this in every other
realm of knowledge. The artist grows by attention and
interest. He gives himself to beauty, as it were. He, there-
fore, sees more beauty than others. When the artist Tur-
ner was showing a lady one of his landscapes, she re-
marked : "Mr. Turner, I have never seen such high coloring
in nature." "No," said the artist ; ''but don't you wish you
could?"
Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall
see God," and this is the law of revelation. Growing like-
ness of character is the basis of a growing clearness of rev-
elation.
I04 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VI. A PERSONAL GOD.
"Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness :
that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto
every good work." (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17.)
"And we have the word of prophecy made more sure ; whereunto
ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place,
until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts : knowing
this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation.
For no prophecy ever came by the will of man : but men spake from
God, being moved by the Holy Spirit." (2 Pet. i. 19-21.)
"Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have
eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me." (John
V. 39.)
PART VII. WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
The Bible does not claim to be a textbook o£ science, his-
tory, or literature. Neither is it a fetish to drive off evil
and bring good. It is not a book of holy riddles. It does
not even claim to be the only revelation of God's will. John
says distinctly that his record of Jesus is only a partial rec-
ord and that if all were written down the world could
scarcely hold the written records. (John xxi. 25.) The
Bible is and claims to be a record of man's progressive
growth toward God. It is a record of man's age-long search
for and his experience with God. It is, therefore, a record
of what God has been able to make known to men in past
ages and through a specific race. It is, as it were, the lab-
oratory book of that part o£ humanity which was most alert
to the sense of God. The Jews went into the great labora-
tory of personal forces; and, finding God, they wrote down
their experience for us, just as a scientific student writes in
his laboratory book the experience he has with certain phys-
ical forces.
It is evident, therefore, that the Bible will be a progressive
revelation. Many students have asked me how I could ex-
plain for them the seemingly incomplete morals of the Old
Testament. It must be explained on the basis of progres-
sive revelation. What Moses heard God say was of neces-
sity colored by the content of his own mind. He did not
have the fully developed, pure soul of Paul or Jesus, and he
must of necessity fail to catch the full meaning of God's
message.
A PERSONAL GOD. 10$
Revelation is not a miraculous something that has no ref-
erence to man's intelligence. It must come through the
medium of man's person and hence must take on to some
extent the color of the medium. It is for that reason that
all revelation is incomplete, save that which comes in the
perfect person, Christ. He is final, but it must not be for-
gotten that we have not fathomed all that finality yet. Ev-
ery century finds new meaning in Christ, because no pre-
vious century has had people capable of understanding that
side of Christ's life. We are just now beginning to catch
the meaning of Christ's social message. The message has
always been there, but we are just now becoming able to
interpret it.
The Bible, therefore, is a progressive revelation fitted to
man's capacity. God is wiser than a kindergarten teacher,
and no such teacher would begin her six-year-old children
in the abstractions of mathematics or astronomy. Or, to
put it differently, I have a friend. After I have known him
a month, I think his character is one thing. After I have
known him a year, I see new depths in his life. After I
have known him intimately ten years, I am sure that I did
not know him at all at the end of the first year. This is
progressive revelation. Now, the Bible is just the report
that some of the world's greatest souls have given us of
their growing friendship with God. Since we can know
God only through personal association with him, this is
the only way that the world's stock of knowledge about God
can grow. Our knowledge must be the sum total of avail-
able experiences which men have had with God. These
great hungry souls went in search of God, and they found
him in ever-increasing measure. Or, if we turn it around,
the eager, loving soul of God yearned to make himself
known to his children, and he has progressively been able
to make them understand. If man is a person and God a
loving Person, we cannot doubt that somehow they may
come to know each other. The Bible, therefore, is the rec-
ord of these supreme meetings of the soul of man with the
soul of God. It is the record of the supreme experiences of
the race and will ever remain a sacred book. That section
of the Bible which records Christ's consciousness of God
must be our highest and our final standard of truth, for
Christ met God as no other man may ever hope to meet him.
STUDY VTI.
Christ the Supreme Revelation of God,
Io8 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VII. CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELA-
TION OF GOD.
'They say unto him, Teacher, this woman hath been taken in
adultery, in the very act. Now in the law Moses commanded us to
stone such : what then sayest thou of her ? And this they said, trying
him, that they might have whereof to accuse him." (John viii. 4-6.)
"Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty
nights, he afterward hungered. And the tempter came and said unto
hirn, If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become
bread. But he answered and said. It is written, Man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God." (Matt. iv. 1-4.)
PART I. THE MANHOOD OF CHRIST.
Our last study brought us face to face with God's method
of making himself known to men. There we saw that
Christ was God's highest expression of himself. Here we
must justify that statement. It must be noted, in the first
place, that Christ evidently conceived himself to be without
sin. He challenges the haughty leaders of Israel to convict
him of sin. (John viii. 46.) In all the records of the New
Testament we find not the least intimation that he knows
sin in his own person. In the five passages which refer to
his character and which Schmiedel^ recognizes as alone
absolutely authentic Jesus acknowledges his dependence on
God. He recognizes his relative inability, save as related to
the Father; but in no case is there the least intimation that
he has sin in his life. He never asks forgiveness; he shows
no signs of penitence. "He comes back to each new duty
untrammeled by any rebuking memories. . . . He is
conscious that he has never deflected at any point from the
line prescribed. . . . And so he confronts the present
with an undimmed confidence."^
This confidence was not due to a hardened condition of
soul. Men sometimes sin until they become so deadened
that they are unaware of their sin. Indeed, the sense of sin
is usually a mark of growing moral character. But this was
not the explanation of Christ's sense of sinlessness. No
^Mark iii. 21-35; x. 18; xii. 32; xiii. 32; xv. 34.
^Forrest, "The Christ of History and Experience," pages 30, 31.
CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELATION OF GOD. 109
other person ever condemned sin so unsparingly and yet
loved men so whole-heartedly.
Not only do the Gospels portray Christ as a perfect moral
character, but also the letters of the New Testament. St.
Paul was a man of scholarship and a man with sterling
business qualities. He was not a man who could easily be
hoodwinked. Not only so, but he knew personally most of
the closest followers of Christ. And yet St. Paul asserts
again and again that Christ was a sinless man.
It is further to be noted that the whole world joins in this
estimate. Even the most severe critics have not dared at-
tack the moral character of Jesus.
Renan was the arch-skeptic of France. I remember my
surprise when I read his life of Christ. I had expected rid-
icule; instead I found the highest praise. Listen to this
word of his : "From amidst uniform depravity pillars rise
toward the sky and testify to a nobler destiny. Jesus is the
highest of these pillars that show to men whence he comes
and whither he ought to tend." And again he says : "The
palm is his who has been both powerful in words and deeds,
who has discerned the good and at the price of his blood has
made it triumph. Jesus from this double point of view is
without equal, his glory remains entire, and will ever be re-
newed."
It is the deliberate conclusion of those who have studied
the facts with care that Jesus presents to the world the one
moral character which is above reproach. Sidney Lanier,
the great Southern poet and scholar, after calling the roll
of the world's great names and coupling with each name
"some sweet forgiveness" for their "errors rich," breaks
out in this wonderful word about Christ, which is a sum-
mary of the estimate of the ages :
But thee, but thee, O sovereign seer of time,
But thee, O poet's poet, wisdom's tongue,
But thee, O man's best man, O love's best love
O perfect life in perfect labor writ,
O all men's comrade, servant, king or priest —
What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect,
What rumor tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's or death's —
O, what amiss may I forgive in thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ!
— Lanier's "The Crystal.'*
no CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VII. CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELA-
TION OF GOD.
"All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do
unto you, even so do ye also unto them : for this is the law and the
prophets." (Matt. vii. 12.)
PART 11. CHRIST'S PERFECT MORAL STANDARDS.
Not only did Jesus live an exemplary moral life, but he
set up a complete and final standard of morals. I have had
many students say that we have outgrown the standards of
Buddhism, those of Mohammedanism, and those of Confu-
cianism. Why may we not outgrow those of Christianity?
First, I have suggested that there is a fundamental difference
between the standard of Christ and that of the other reli-
gions. This is not a difference of degree, but a difference of
kind. Confucius, Buddha, and Mohammed attempted to set
forth a minute code of all the moral duties of life. A care-
ful reading of the texts of these religions will reveal splen-
did moral precepts, although there are many nonessential
and nonmoral principles exalted to the plane of morality.
But the great difficulty lies in the fact that a code which fits
the needs of men to-day will be outgrown by the next gen-
eration. Under the system of a code the people advance,
but their moral standards stay fixed.
Speaking of this situation in China, Legge says : "There
has been a tendency to advance, and Confucius has all along
been trying to carry the nation back. The consequence is
that China has increased beyond the ancient dimensions,
while there has been no corresponding development of
thought."^ A code of morals means a stationary morality;
and human life is progressive and not stationary. Hence
no code can ever be drawn up which will be permanent.
It is just here that Christ shows himself superior to all
other moral teachers. Even the Old Testament lays down
its Ten Commandments, which are perhaps the best moral
rules that the world has. But they were inadequate even in
Christ's day. In the fifth chapter of Matthew Christ goes
beyond a number of the old commands, implying that they
are too low a standard for his kingdom. "I have not come
to abrogate these, then (the law), but to give them their
completion." He does not put in their place some set form
CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELATION OF GOD. m
of command. He does not attempt to work out a list of du-
ties or prohibitions. Christianity has no moral code. It has
a moral principle and a moral dynamic, but not a code.
Christ's teachings outstrip all other teachings. He took
morality out of the realm of overt action and pushed it back
into the realm of motives. He said that a murderer was not
simply a man who took his brother's physical life, but also
the man who hated his brother and would like to take his
life. (Matt. v. 21, 22.) He said that the adulterer was not
simply the man who in his body sinned against a woman,
but a man who cherished lustful thoughts about a woman.
(Matt. V. 2y, 28.) In other words, according to Christ's
standard, sin was not simply a deed that could be catalogued
or punished ; sin was a motive of the inner life.
He went further and described the quality of a moral
motive and the quality of an immoral motive. He set forth
the fundamental principle in accordance with which every
motive must be judged. He said that love was the test of
life. If we want to know whether a motive is right or not,
test it by unselfish love. If your motive is unselfish and
held in the spirit of love to others, then your life is morally
good. This love must extend, not to your neighbor alone,
but to all men, even your enemies.
Lovelessness is the final sin. A man can go to ruin in his
character as rapidly by the road of lovelessness and selfish
motive as along the road of criminal deeds. Love is life;
but selfishness is death. Now, this sets a final standard of
morals which humanity can never outgrow. Little by little
humanity is growing in the spirit of brotherliness. Little
by little we are seeing that unselfishness is the law of life.
The more we see this, the more will Christ's standard of
perfect brotherhood tower above us. It is a flying goal.
The more we approach it, the further it leads ahead. The
jnore we see of the meaning of unselfish love, the more do
we recognize the unfathomed depths of Christ's moral prin-
ciple.
In taking morals out of the realm of codes and putting
them in the realm of motives and in setting unselfish love as
.the highest motive of life, Christ has given us a standard of
morals which is final and unsurpassable.
^Legge, 'The Chinese Classics," Volume I., page 107.
112 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VII. CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELA-
TION OF GOD.
''But when the Son of man shall come in his glory,, and all the
angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and
before him shall be gathered all the nations : and he shall separate
them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from
the goats ; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats
on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand,
Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world : for I was hungry, and ye gave me
to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and
ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye vis-
ited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the
righteous answer him, saying. Lord, when saw we thee hungry,
and fed thee? or athirst, and gave thee drink? And when saw we
thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? And
when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And tht
King shall answer and say unto them. Verily I say unto you. Inas-
much as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least,
ye did it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left
hand. Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is pre-
pared for the devil and his angels : for I was hungry, and ye did not
give me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a
stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not;
sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also
answer, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a
stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto
thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you,
Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not
unto me. And these shall go away into eternal punishment: but
the righteous into eternal life." (Matt. xxv. 31-46.)
PART III. CHRIST THE FORGIVER OF SIN.
But Christ did not stop with having a moral life and set-
ting up a final standard of moral action. He went further
and said that a man*s life was to be judged by his attitude
toward him as revealed in his attitude toward his fellow
men. (Matt. xxv. 31-46.) In other words, Christ as the
Judge of sin was also able to forgive sin. But the power to
forgive lies in the capacity to bring people to the attitude
where they may be forgiven. Even God cannot forgive a
man who does not want forgiveness. If forgiveness is, as
we defined it earlier, the change on the part of God from a
disapproving love to an approving love, then that change
can take place only when man's attitude is worthy of ap-
CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELATION OF GOD. 113
proval. The attitude of turning from sin, the attitude of
reverence for the best, the attitude of love toward persons
is the prerequisite of forgiveness. If Christ v^^as to be a
forgiver of sin, he must have capacity to bring men back
to their better selves, back to God. This Jesus believed he
had capacity to do. "But I, when I am lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men to myself." (John xii. 32.) He
felt that there was that moral attractiveness about his life
that would make men hate sin and turn from it. He felt that
he was able to give such a complete picture of the loving
heart of God that men would gladly turn away from sin and
turn to God.
Precisely this is what has been happening in all the centu-
ries since Christ. Men have been coming into his presence
to see what the real standard of life is. There they have
come to have a sense of sin. If any student wants to find
out whether he is living right or not, let him study the
Gospels. Let him stand in the presence of the manhood of
Christ, and he will soon find out what kind of a character
he has.
Now, the whole unselfish life and the unselfish and shame-
ful death of Christ were necessary to help make clear to
men how God hated sin. On the life of Christ the burden
of sin rested. He agonized over it in every person he saw.
He suffered with every sinful man ; and his deep sympathy,
which ultimately broke his heart on the cross, was manifest
not only in his life, but in his death. By some mysterious
alchemy of the human soul, love and sympathy arouse the
same feeling in the soul loved, so that Christ's love has bro-
ken the hearts of men of hardened life. His death on the
cross was the summation of all his sympathy for men in
their struggle with sin. He too had known the bitter agony
caused by the sin of man. Not his own sin cost him his life,
but his sympathy for the sin of others. It costs something
to know the sin and failure and need of others. It will
break your heart to really sympathize with those in need,
but in breaking your heart it will help to save the world.
It is just this fact of heartbreaking sympathy for men, of
self -identification with them, that has made the cross of
Christ the means of bringing men into a new attitude to-
ward God. The facts of life show that Christ's expectation
was justified. His suffering love has led men back to God,
and thereby he has really become the forgiver of sin.
8
114 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VII. CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELA-
TION OF GOD.
"Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that
sent me, and to accomplish his work." (John iv. 34.)
"I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which
thou hast given me to do. And now, Father, glorify thou me with
thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the
world was. I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gav-
est me out of the world : thine they were, and thou gavest them to
me; and they have kept thy word. Now they know that all things
whatsoever thou hast given me are from thee : for the words which
thou gavest me I have given unto them ; and they received them, and
knew of a truth that I came forth from thee, and they believed that
thou didst send me." (John xvii. 4-8.)
"Jesus answered. If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing: It is
my Father that glorifieth me ; of whom ye say, that he is your God ;
and ye have not known him : but I know him ; and if I should say, I
know him not, I shall be like unto you, a liar: but I know him, and
keep his word." (John viii. 54, 55.)
PART IV. CHRIST THE REVEALER OF GOD.
At the age of twelve Jesus went with his parents to Jeru-
salem to attend the great feast. At the close of this festival
occasion, as they started northward, for some unaccountable
reason Jesus was left behind. When the parents found out
about it, they went back to hunt for him and found him in
the temple discussing the facts of God's life. It is evident
from what we have reported at that time that there was
already dawning in his consciousness that deep sense of fel-
lowship with God which makes him the most remarkable
person the world has ever had.
All the way through his life Jesus seemed to have an un-
wavering sense of close communion with God. Other men
have had this sense to a remarkable degree, but not as Jesus
had it. To him it was the one great reality. Everything
was dominated by this ; and if it were not true, then he was
the most deluded man that history records.
Not only did Christ feel that he knew God, but he felt
that it was his supreme mission to make God known to men.
"Jesus," says Harnack, "is conscious that he knows God in
CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELATION OF GOD.
115
a way which no one ever knew him before, and he knows
that it is his vocation to communicate this knowledge to
others by word and deed."^
He talked so often and so familiarly about God that one
day one of his disciples said: "Lord, show us the Father,
and it sufficeth uSo" Jesus' simple answer was: "Have I
been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me,
Philip ? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. How
sayest thou. Show us the Father?" (John xiv. 8, 9.) Jesus
was so conscious of God that he felt he was living the very
life of God himself, so that a man who saw him saw also
the very life of God. Christ never urges men to take his
teachings apart from himself, but he embodies his teachings
in himself.
Herein lies a fundamental distinction between Christian-
ity and the other religions. Other religions are the religions
of a book. Christianity is the religion of a person. I mean
that Gautama, the Buddha, specifically told his disciples to
forget him, but to keep the law : "Whoever shall adhere un-
weariedly to this Law and Discipline, he shall cross the ocean
of life and make an end of Sorrow."^ We have the law of
Buddha, and it makes no difference who gave it. It is not
dependent upon his life. But with Christianity it is entirely
different. Christ identifies his life with his message. We
are, therefore, not told to follow his law, but to follow him.
He is a living Person, a revelation of God to men, contin-
ually dwelling in the hearts of men. His teachings are only
instruments to lead men to him, the Life Giver.
Does the precept run, "Believe in good
In justice, truth, now understood
For the first time'' ? or, "Believe in me.
Who lived and died, yet essentially
Am Lord of life"?
— Browning's ^'Christmas Eve"
1.1 t
^Harnack, "What Is Christianity?" page 128.
2Rhys Davids' "Buddhism," page 79.
Ii6 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY VII. CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELA-
TION OF GOD.
"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am
meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For
my yoke is easy, and my burden is Hght." (Matt. xi. 28-30.)
"The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy :
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." (John
X. 10.)
"I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me." (Phil. iv. 13.)
PART V. MEETING THE NEEDS OF MEN.
But even more remarkable than anything else in the life
of Christ was his consciousness that he could meet the needs
of men. No religious worker fails to see the deep hunger
and unsatisfied longings of men. This longing cannot be
satisfied with things. Some of the most dissatisfied people
we know have a superabundance of things. It is only fel-
lowship with kindred souls that will satisfy a person. It is
for this reason that men when they really love a person will
sacrifice all else rather than lose the person. Persons alone
meet our need. Jesus believed that he in a supreme sense
could meet the needs of men. "He seems to be confident
that no one else can give what he promises. What he prom-
ises is a life of profound usefulness or satisfaction; and he
promises it to any troubled spirit, no matter what its bur-
dens or unresting aspirations may be. Imagine with what
confident desire he looked out upon the crowds of travelers,
business men, and soldiers thronging the great world high-
ways that crossed' and recrossed Palestine. They were go-
ing here and there in the world on various errands. He
stood looking at them from the Galilean hilltops with the
CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELATION OF GOD. ny
consciousness of being one who could afford them peace and
light through his companionship."^
The remarkable thing is that men through all the ages
have felt that Christ was doing what he thought he could
do. Poor, distraught human beings have come to Christ and
have gone their way with a new sense of peace and calm.
Men needing freedom from sin have found peace through
him. Men needing strength for battle have found courage
in him. It is no make-believe. Millions of the earth's tru-
est and strongest and best have come to Christ and found
life. We can no more doubt their testimony than we can
doubt the whole company of scientists who agree on certain
scientific discoveries. "The scientific student goes into his
laboratory and, taking his formula, tests it to see if it gives
the proper results. If he follows the conditions laid down,
he gets the results. Another man, who tries the same for-
mula but does not follow the conditions in full, fails to get
the results. He allows an error to slip in — some precipitate
or acid or what not. But if every man who meets the con-
ditions of the formula finds the same results, we say that the
formula is correct."^ In similar fashion the men who have
met Christ's conditions have found him meeting their deep-
est needs. Some who have not met these conditions may
deride the idea of Christ meeting men's needs, but they can
have no right to an opinion when they have not met the con-
ditions. Meeting the conditions and trying the experiment
is the one way to find the truth, and those who have made
the venture testify that he meets their deepest needs.
^Bosworth's "Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles," page 39.
^The author's "Introducing Men to Christ," page 169.
Ii8 CHRISTIAN LIPE—A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY VII. CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELA-
TION OF GOD.
"God is a Spirit : and they that worship him must worship in spirit
and truth. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah cometh
(he that is called Christ) : when he is come, he will declare unto us
all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he."
(John iv. 24-26.)
"And many more believed because of his word; and they said to
the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy speaking: for we
have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Saviour
of the world." (John iv. 41, 42.)
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life ;
no one cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John xiv. 6.)
PART VI. THE MEANING OF CHRIST'S CONSCIOUSNESS.
What, then, is the meaning of such a consciousness as
Christ had? He believed himself to be a sinless man. He
believed that he had a unique fellov^^ship with God. He be-
lieved that he could bring men to turn to God. He believed
that he could meet all the needs of men. What a wonderful
opinion to have of one's self ! He must have been one of
three things, either the world's greatest egoist or the world's
craziest man or what he really claimed to be.
It seems to me that we can set aside the first at once as be-
ing a psychological impossibility. If Christ in his colossal
egotism was simply deceiving men, how could we account
for his perfect moral life? There is a unity of moral life,
and no man can be completely false and untrue in one realm
of his nature and still be true and holy in another realm.
We may almost as quickly dismiss the second. If Christ
had been deluded as to his essential nature, surely he could
not have been the sanest, most normal, best-poised man in
CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELATION OF GOD.
119
the world. But even the skeptics acknowledge that he was
the world's wonder of sanity, poise, and self-possession.
Neither could we suppose that the world's finest system of
morals and its highest expression of life could be the result-
ant of a demented brain. No one can believe this.
If, then, he was neither a deceiver nor a deceived man,
he was surely the kind of person he believed himself to be,
the very Son of God.
If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men
Mere man, the first and best but nothing more, —
Account Him, for reward of what He was,
Now and forever, wretchedest of all.
For see : Himself conceived of life as love.
Conceived of love as what must enter in,
Fill up, make one with His each soul he loved:
Thus much for man's joy, all men's joy for Him.
Well, He is gone, thou sayest to fit reward.
But by this time are many souls set free,
And very many still retained alive :
Nay, should His coming be delayed awhile,
Say ten years longer (twelve years, some compute).
See if, for every finger of thy hands,
There be not found, that day the world shall end.
Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ's word.
That He will grow incorporate with all.
With me as Pamphylax, with him as John,
Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this?
Yet Christ sayeth, this He lived and died to do.
Call Christ, then, the illimitable God,
Or lost ! —Browning's "A Dearth in the Desert,"
120 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VII. CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELA-
TION OF GOD.
"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld
his glory, glor};- as of the only-begotten from the Father), full of
grace and truth." (John i. 14.)
"The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament showeth his handiwork."
(Ps. xix. I.)
"God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets
by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these
days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things,
through whom also he made the worlds." (Heb. i. i, 2.)
PART VII. IS THE INCARNATION IDEA UNREASONABLE?
After presenting all the foregoing facts to a certain stu-
dent, he said : *'Yes, they all seem to be true ; but the incar-
nation idea seems to me absurd and impossible. There can-
not be such a thing." Well, let us see. Is this opposed to
all reason, as my student thought? A Christian should be
the last one to ask a student to believe that which was essen-
tially unreasonable. We may not be able to demonstrate all
truth — in fact, only a very limited number of truths can be
demonstrated. All we need to do is to show that a fact is
not unreasonable, that it does not cut across the normal
processes of the mind.
First of all, let us remember that this idea of an incarna-
tion is deeply imbedded in the human mind. Men of all
nations have looked for the incarnation of the God idea.
Even in Mohammedan countries, where the founder of the
system strenuously denied the possibilities of an incarna-
tion, the human heart has found many ways to circumvent
this philosophy. If this is so deeply imbedded in human
nature, we should not be surprised if the fact should prove
tenable and reasonable.
So long as our philosophy was purely materialistic and
all existence was simply the result of blind forces acting
in accordance with blind laws — in other words, so long as
we thought of the world as purely a mechanical world —
there could be no place for an incarnation. But we do not
now so view the world. We think of the universe as the ex-
CHRIST THE SUPREME REVELATION OF GOD. 121
pression of will. It is matter shot through with personality.
Spirit and matter are not opposites. Spirit is not abstrac-
tion, but is self -embodying soul. Just as I am conscious of
my processes and as I manifest myself in this human em-
bodiment, so God is conscious of himself in all his embodi-
ments in nature. In other words, God is the process of the
tmiverse. Every phase of the universe is but an expression
of God. The forces of nature are but the workings of his
will. This is our present-day philosophical attitude. Per-
haps the strict philosopher would use the word ^'absolute"
where I use the word "God."
*Tn a perfectly real sense creation is incarnation, nature
the body of the infinite Spirit, the organism which divine
thought has articulated and filled with this breath of life."^
What man who has stood on the mountain top and seen
the beauty of the landscape or the richness of a mountain
sunset has not felt himself in the very presence of God?
Beauty and majesty have no utilitarian value. They seem to
be alone set to show us the life of God. We are in the habit
of saying that we see God in nature.
"The heavens declare the glory of God ;
And the firmament showeth his handiwork."
So we speak, and this is the incarnation idea. This incar-
nation idea is just the fact of the Unseen looking out upon
us through the seen.
Now, if God can look out upon us through nature, what
is to hinder him looking out upon us through the highest
form of that nature, which is human nature? And if in one
human nature he should completely and fully look out upon
us, there would be nothing unreasonable or untenable in the
thought. The facts seem to show that this is precisely what
he has done.
"Many were the forms and fashions in which God spoke of old
to our fathers by the prophets, but in these days at the end he has
spoken to us by a Son." (Heb. i. i, 2.)
I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ,
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it,
And has so far advanced thee to be wise.
— Broivning's "A Death in the Desert."
^Fairbairn, "The Philosophy of the Christian Religion," page 479.
STUDY VIII.
Man and His Relationships.
124 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VIII. MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS.
"And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created
he him; male and female created he them." (Gen. i. 26, 27.)
"For thou hast made him but little lower than God,
And crownest him with glory and honor.
Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet :
All sheep and oxen,
Yea, and the beasts of the field,
The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea.
Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas."
(Ps. viii. 5-8.)
"And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not
man for the sabbath." (Mark ii. 27.)
PART I. THE NATURE OF MAN.
We have defiined religion as the right relationship between
persons. It is essential to the full understanding of this
definition that we come to understand the nature of the per-
sons entering into this relationship. On one side stands God
as revealed in Jesus Christ ; on the other stands man.
We have seen that personaHty consists in a combination
of three aspects of consciousness : intelligence, emotion or
sensibility, and will power. All of these elements man pos-
sesses in some degree, though no one of them may be found
in perfect degree in any one person. Man, therefore, is not a
perfect person; or one might say that he is not completely
personal. He is growing toward personality. Man's per-
sonality is not dififerent in kind from God's, but is limited in
degree — that is, we know truth, in so far as we know it at
all, just as God knows truth. We love, in so far as we really
do love, just as God loves; for love is love, even though a
a perfect love would be so far advanced over our own that
it would appear to be an entirely new species. We are made
in the likeness of God. There is a real likeness, though not
a complete likeness.
We assert this likeness when we declare that man is a
moral being. We mean that there is harmony between the
MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS. 125
inmost being of man and the essence of the universe, or
God. The foundation of all morality is the sense of ought-
ness within the man, which is just another way of saying
the sense of man's unity with the universe, which is the
expression of God's life. When a man says that he ought,
he has gone to the bottom. Why ought he? Just because
his nature tells him that he ought. And that nature tells him
that he ought because oughtness is of the very essence of
personal being, which, traced to its ultimate meaning, is that
he is akin to a self -consistent and moral God. All con-
science, all sense of duty, all moral right and wrong, ulti-
mately grounds itself in our sense of oneness in nature with
God.
The reason morality has such transcendent power, the
reason it cannot be really and permanently crushed, is that it
is an expression of the permanent and eternal likeness of
man to God. "For if the Supreme Power of the universe
is allied with the cause of goodness [we would prefer to
say, is goodness] , the man who performs a good act has the
universe behind him. Even though the act appear to be one
of absolute self-sacrifice, yet the individual cannot really
lose, since God is on his side."^ Man's morality consists,
therefore, in his deliberate choosing of that which is right,
that which is in harmony with his own highest nature and in
harmony with the nature of God. In this choice man's will
is the final determining element. Even though man at any
stage of his life may not know the final good, he is duty-
bound to live to the best he knows at any time. His sense of
right will be a growing attitude.
The Christian doctrine of man differs from that of the
non-Christian religions in most fundamental ways. Mo-
hammedanism denies that there is any kinship between God
and man. Confucianism ignores such kinship, even though
it may not deny it. Not only so, but Mohammedanism and
Hinduism both deny the freedom of man's will. The first
is a system of determinism; the second is a system of fatal-
ism. While Christianity recognizes this sovereignty of God,
it at the same time maintains the freedom of man and his
moral responsibility. Christianity, therefore, puts much
more emphasis on moral life than any of the non-Christian
religions.
^Wright, "Self-Realization/' page 277
126 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY VIII. MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS.
"Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he hath
been approved, he shall receive the crov^n of life, which the Lord
promised to them that love him. Let no man say when he is tempted,
I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he
himself tempteth no man: but each man is tempted, when he is
drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then the lust, when it
hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown,
bringeth forth death." (Jas. i. 12-15.)
"Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he
fall. There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear :
but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that
ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of es-
cape, that ye may be able to endure it." (i Cor. x. 12, 13.)
PART IL GROWTH OF MORAL LIFE.
A CHILD is born into the world with capacities both for
good and for eviL It is not a moral being, but it has capaci-
ty to become a moral being. Two great forces will mold the
life into its mature form. The first of these forces is hered-
ity. The individual man is a part of the race. He enters
life in the midst of the stream of human consciousness. He
must, therefore, bring with him certain of the established
tendencies of the race. This relation of the individual to
the race has led some to suppose that the direction of the
life is so set before responsibility dawns, that the nature of
the child is so bent at birth, as to remove from him all re-
sponsibility. We may not be able to answer all the questions
raised by heredity in relation to freedom ; but this much we
do know: that all human society, all law, all discipline is
based on the conviction that man ultimately and finally is
free. Heredity may modify the degree of responsibility, but
it cannot destroy it and leave man still a man. I have noth-
ing to say about the kind of disposition I inherit, but I am
responsible for the way I use and train that disposition.
After the child comes into the world, he finds himself sur-
rounded by certain forces and influences. These have a
tendency to mold his character in accordance with their own
nature. Some have, therefore, supposed that a man is made
by his environment. While no man can prevent his enviroa-
MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS. 12;
ment influencing his life, even if it be only in the nature of
a recoil, yet man is not bound by his environment. A man
can make his own environment, as it were. We grow like
that on which we center our attention, and a man's power of
attention lies in the realm of the will. I may attend to the
best about me, or I may attend to the worst. Tw^o boys
come from the same home with approximately the same
heredity and practically the same environment. They enter
college. One becomes a social dandy, and the other be-
comes a serious student. The difference is largely in the
things to which they give attention. Man ultimately is free
and, therefore, responsible. Or, to put it from the reverse
angle, we hold man responsible for his actions; therefore
we must believe that he is ultimately free. How, then, does
the child use his freedom to build character? "It is of the
very essence of life to express itself; and this expression
takes the form of personal assertion, personal initiative, the
assumption of self-command. It is out of this inner strug-
gle of self-command and self-assertion that character is
born. All character, whether good or bad, is the accelerated
victory over opposite tendencies. This, then, means the de-
velopment of will, the building of the power of choice."^
Since it is of the nature of life to express itself, this choice,
this self-assertion, is not in itself evil or selfish. But out of
this growth into self-assertion the selfish tendency arises.
We are apt to come to the place where we do a thing simply
because we want to and without due regard to the rights of
others. The minute our self-assertiveness becomes selfish-
ness it has passed over into the realm of evil and sin.
^The author's "Personal Elements in Religion," chapter on "Sin."
128 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VIII. MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS.
"And he said unto all. If any man would come after me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For who-
soever would save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his
life for my sake, the same shall save it. For what is a man profited,
if he gain the whole world, and lose or forfeit his own self?" (Luke
ix. 23-25.)
"But Jesus called them unto him, and said. Ye know that the
rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise
authority over them. Not so shall it be among you : but whosoever
would become great among you shall be your minister; and whoso-
ever would be first among you shall be your servant: even as the
Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
give his life a ransom for many." (Matt. xx. 25-28.)
PART III. SELFISHNESS AS SIN.
The fact that it is of the very essence and nature of life
to express itself has given rise to a kind of laissez faire
theory of morals. It has become a kind of defense of li-
cense. A college man came to me once, saying that indul-
gence of his physical nature was no more nor less than the
expression of his being; and that was natural. He had for-
gotten, however, and refused to remember that his nature
must be expressed with reference both to his own best self
and to the well-being of others. To act in accord with the
demand of my lower life without due regard to the rights
of my higher self and the rights of others is sin.
"Love, looking upward toward God and outward toward
man, is the true law of life; and such love, filial and frater-
nal, will render it impossible for a man to be a selfish, self-
regarding, self-seeking person. It is true that there is a self-
regard which in its place is not sinful, but normal and wor-
thy; and yet to a man in the right attitude, not self, but God
and men, will appear the chief end to be regarded, and the
MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS. i2g
general claim of duty will appear more urgent than all self-
interest/"
Sin, therefore, is the placing of my will, self-will, self-
ishness, over against the will and the need of all other per-
sons — God and men. Sin is selfishness. It will appear,
therefore, that sin is not an abstract something, but is a
concrete form of relationship. It is lack of harmony, delib-
erate opposition to other persons or my best person. When,
therefore, man gets so set on having his own way and on
following his own desire that he forgets and disregards
either his own highest self or other selves, he becomes a sin-
ful man. Selfishness is the root of all sin. A man is a
libertine because he forgets his own higher nature and the
person against whom he sins in the one consuming desire to
satisfy his lower nature — that is, he is selfish. A man is
dishonest when he forgets the property rights of others in
the morbid desire to possess. He is selfish. Persons are
jealous when they exalt the importance of their own natures
and fail to give consideration to the virtues and rights of
other natures. They consider themselves alone worthy of
love, which is a form of selfishness. One is selfish when,
because of ease, one indulges one's lower nature and neg-
lects one's higher nature, which becomes sin. All intellec-
tual laziness, all inordinate yielding to ease at the expense
of development, is selfishness, is sin.
Therefore one may go to perdition on the road of selfish-
ness as rapidly as one goes on the road of so-called grosser
sins. The essential failure of selfishness lies in the fact that
it makes one insensible to the needs and rights of others. It
thus cuts one off from sympathy with others and destroys
one's means of growth. In this respect selfishness becomes
sin.
iQarke, "Outline of Christian Theology," page 235.
9
130 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY VIII. MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS.
"Behold, all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the
soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die." (Ezek.
xviii. 4.)
"Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants
unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin
unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But thanks be to
God, that, whereas ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from
the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered ; and
being made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness. I
speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh ;
for as ye presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to
iniquity unto iniquity, even so now present your members as serv-
ants to righteousness unto sanctification. For when ye were servants
of sin, ye were free in regard of righteousness. What fruit then had
ye at that time in the things whereof ye are now ashamed ? for the
end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin
and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification,
and the end eternal life. For the wages of sin is death; but the
free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. vi.
16-23.)
"Every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness ; and sin is law-
lessness. And ye know that he was manifested to take away sins;
and in him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: who-
soever sinneth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him." (i John
iii. 4-6.)
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the
truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and right-
eous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous-
ness." (i John i. 8, 9.)
PART IV. THE GROWTH AND MEANING OF SIN.
Stevens, in his "Psychology of the Human Soul,'* out-
lines the growth of the power of sin, or selfish desire. First,
we perceive an object or an end. Secondly, we think of this
object or end as a possible good. Thirdly, we dwell on the
thought of the good to be received. In common parlance,
we play with temptation. Fourthly, a strong desire seizes
us to take this possible good for ourselves regardless of how
it may aflfect others. Fifthly, we act, and the sin is done.
Every man who has yielded to temptation knows how true
is this description. Sin comes from staying so long in the
MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS. 131
presence of a selfish desire that we forget other things in
this supreme desire.
Sin has at least four evil results in the individual life.
First of all, it brings suffering. The laws of righteousness,
as we have seen, are inwrought into the very fiber of the
universe, and he w^ho does wrong goes counter to the uni-
verse. He may not suffer at once, but suffer sometime he
surely must if the laws of the universe hold true.
In the second place, sin dulls our perception of right and
wrong. The tempter told the woman that her disobedience
would open her eyes to knowledge; instead it blinded her to
truth and opened her eyes to all sorts of evil. Like propa-
gates like, and he who sins begins to see life as sinful. To
become so blinded by sin that one is incapable of seeing
God's truth is probably the impardonable sin spoken of by
Jesus.
Thirdly, sin paralyzes the will. "From him that hath not
shall be taken away, even that which he seemeth to have."
Not only does sin blind a man to new truth, but it makes
him incapable of acting on the truth he already possesses.
He becomes obsessed, as it were, with evil. His mind is
auto-intoxicated with its own selfish desires. Even the ha-
tred of our sin causes us to dwell on it until it fairly pos-
sesses us, and we seem helpless to shake ourselves free.
Lastly, as suggested before, sin separates us from persons.
Soul responsiveness is the law of life, and lack of soul con-
tact is certain moral and spiritual death.
This is an entirely different conception of sin from that
of the non-Christian religions. According to India's reli-
gion, sin is an error, delusion, mistaken conceptions. Ac-
cording to Mohammedanism, sin is the doing of things for-
bidden by the decrees of an arbitrary God. Sin carries with
it no sense of guilt, but rather a fear of punishment.
Sin, according to Christianity, entails guilt and hence re-
morse. Liability to punishment is as nothing compared
with the sense of guilt. This sense of wrongdoing is present
with all men, but the non-Christian religions have failed to
rightly relate it to a true theory of repentance. Rather they
have connected it up with ritualistic observances which lead
to no moral end.
132
CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VIII. MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS.
"And if thy hand or thy foot causeth thee to stumble, cut It off,
and cast it from thee : it is good for thee to enter into life maimed
or halt, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into the
eternal lire. And if thine eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out,
and cast it from thee : it is good for thee to enter into life with one
eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire. See
that ye despise not one of these little ones : for I say unto you, that
in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father who
is in heaven. How think ye ? if any man have a hundred sheep, and
one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine,
and go unto the mountains, and seek that which goeth astray? And
if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth over it
more than over the ninety and nine which have not gone astray.
Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that one
of these little ones should perish." (Matt, xviii. 8-14.)
PART V. THE SACREDNESS OF MAN.
We have seen that man is made in the image of God and
that he is, therefore, capable of associating with God. We
have also seen that sin is the breaking of this relationship
with God and men. It is setting our selfish desire over
against the need and rights of other persons.
If the man is to keep himself free from sin and grow into
the fullness of life, he must ever keep himself conscious of
the sacredness and value of other persons. In the sense of
sacredness which inheres in every person, Christianity stands
supreme among all religious teachings. Felix Adler, in his
"Religion of Duty,*' says that this is one of the great out-
standing teachings of Christ which we have not outlived,
and he seems to think that we will never outlive it.
Many new books have come from the press in the last two
decades on the social meaning of life. Practically all, if not
all, indeed, of these books have drawn their inspiration from
the words of Jesus. He taught that a man v/as not to be
MAN AND BIS RELATIONSHIPS. 133
valued because of what he had, but because of what he was.
What a man is may be entirely in embryo in possibilities, as
it were, but he is essentially related to God and has a herit-
age of a noble destiny. This is essentially the social mes-
sage. Our motive for social service is that man is worthy of
being served and, furthermore, that by being served he can
be lifted toward God. If that were not so, there would be
no motive for service. Christianity of all religions gives
sufficient motive for a real service program. No other reli-
gion save that of the Bible has ever developed a genuine
social program.
If man is sacred, we must never treat any individual man
as if he were a thing. We cannot despise any man. To do
so is to despise the very Godhood within him. This at once
makes all men our brothers and sets aside all race hatred,
race antagonism, and race conflict. He who hates the black
man or the red man or the yellow man hates one made in
the image of God and really hates God himself. There is
no middle ground here. We may be Mohammedans and
hate other men, but we cannot be Christians and hold such
an attitude. Hinduism may produce a caste system ; but in
Christianity there can be no castes, there can be no such
thing as worthless or hopeless humanity. Christianity is the
world's dynamic for social reform. Christ is the world's
greatest social teacher. He is this because he valued men
most and gave himself most freely to meet the needs of men.
He who would keep himself free from sin and keep the ave-
nues of his soul open Godward must incorporate Christ's
teachings of the sacredness of persons into his philosophy
and practice of life.
134 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VIII. MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS.
"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For
this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made mani-
fest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we
shall be like him ; for we shall see him even as he is. And every one
that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure,"
(i John iii, 1-3.)
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who
is against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him
up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all
things? . . . Nay, in all of these things we are more than con-
querors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. viii. 31, 32, 37-39.)
"Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature : the old
things are passed away; behold, they are become new." (2 Cor. v.
17.)
PART VI. THE DESTINY OF MAN.
In no other regard do the non-Christian religions fall so
short as in the conception of the future destiny of man.
Mohammedanism holds to a future life, but it is a very gross
picture. Faithful Mohammedans will be physically resur-
rected with their own human bodies, and nonbelievers will
be raised with bodies of apes, swine, and other animals.
Paradise will not be perpetual fellowship with God, but a
life of sensual pleasure.
But for the God-fearing is a blissful abode, Inclosed gar-
dens and vineyards,
"And damsels with swelling breasts, their peers in age.
And a full cup."^
^Rodwell's translation of the Koran. Sura 78.
MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS. 135
Hinduism denies the continuity of human personality,
and Buddhism denies all personality. Whatever there is,
therefore, corresponding to immortality in these two reli-
gions is a kind of death and rebirth up to the eight mil-
lion four hundred thousand times. It is a dreary, monoto-
nous round of death and birth, without any conscious con-
nection between the various incarnations.
Set by the side of these crude conceptions, Christianity
stands supreme. According to Christ's conception, a man
is here and now, according to his character, entering the
vestibule of eternal life, and life is never-ending. The joys
of future life will be continued personal fellowship with
God, with Christ, and with purified human personalities.
Men are to be freed from the lowly elements of their nature,
and their real personalities are to blossom forth into a per-
petual progress. The Christian conception of immortality,
therefore, is purely spiritual, or, one would better say, purely
one of progressive personal relationship. The very fact of
our personality means that we are immortal, for self -con-
sciousness binds within its power the past and the present.
It transcends time and change. "As persons we are identi-
cal in the midst of change, and on account of our identity
we are potentially infinite."^
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just,
— Tennyson's "In Memoriam."
^Illingworth, "Personality, Human and Divine," page 91.
136 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY VIII. MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
according to his great mercy begat us again into a living hope by
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance
incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in
heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith
unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (i Pet. i.
3-5-)
"Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and searched
diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you."
(i Pet. i. 10.)
"And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true
God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." (John
xvii. 3.)
"But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live
with him." (Rom. vi. 8.)
PART VII. CAN WE ACCEPT THE IDEA OF THE PERMA-
NENCE OF PERSONALITY?'
Serious arguments have been advanced against the belief
in immortality. The first is that of the evolutionist, who
holds that all life is a flux. Nothing is permanent or abid-
ing, but all things are becoming. Man is simply a temporary
stage in a long process. There is no reason to believe that
man, one of the most insignificant beings in this cosmic
process, should be singled out for preservation. This argu-
ment tries to bully us by the preponderance of physical
force.
It is a purely quantitative argument. Men will no lon-
ger be browbeaten by such fallacious logic. Even though
man is small as to quantity, he is supreme as to quality.
Furthermore, if evolutFon is going anywhere, it must have a
goal. There must be a residuum. It would be pure chaos,
a senseless process, that eternally threw away all it produced.
Man is acknowledged as the highest product of this process
of the centuries ; and if he is to be thrown away after a few
centuries or eons, what is the reason or sense of the whole
'Cf. the author's "Personal Elements in Religious Life," Chapter
VIII.
MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS. 137
process? If the universe is reasonable, surely there must be
some permanent element which gives value to the process.
Even the evolutionist needs the conception of immortality to
save his theory from utter chaos.
Again, it has been argued by the psychologist that thought
is a mere function of the brain and that when the brain de-
cays the thought is snuffed out. Thought being a central
element in personality, the decay of the brain would mean
personal extinction. But this is a gratuitous assumption.
No psychologist has ever proved that thought is a function
of the brain. It is far easier to prove that thought uses the
brain as its instrument and that, when the agent is worn
out, the agency may find other means of expression. There
is no proof on either side, hence the psychologist who thinks
that thought is a function of the brain is no more to be
trusted than the psychologist who holds that the brain is the
mere instrument of thought. If psychology cannot prove
immortality, it just as surely cannot disprove it.
The third argument, which we have noticed before in our
discussion of Positivism, claims that it is evil and selfish to
be thinking all the time about our own personal existence in
the future. They hold that it is a mere offering of a prize,
as in a high school. But we cannot see it thus. Immortality
is not a prize for a good life, but it is really a chance to make
the life good. We make a small start toward the develop-
ment of character, and then death cuts our career short. If
there be no chance to continue the growing process, what
good has the struggle been ? We are foreordained to failure
before we start, and we had just as well not start at all.
No man would start to be a philosopher if he knew that all
reasoning power would be taken from him at the end of the
first day. In order to make our struggle for character ra-
tional, we must conclude that there is a chance to continue
the task.
The conception of immortality rests ultimately on the fact
of God. Having a good God, who created us, we cannot
believe that he will cast us aside just as we are beginning
to grow into character capable of having fellowship with
him. Man being what he is and God being a loving Father,
we cannot escape the belief in a continued personal exist-
ence.
STUDY IX.
Can the Modern Man Pray?
140
CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY IX. CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY?
"But Jehovah sent out a great wind upon the sea, and there was
a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.
Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god;
and they cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to
lighten it unto them. But Jonah was gone down into the innermost
parts of the ship ; and he lay, and was fast asleep. So the shipmas-
ter came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper ?
arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that
we perish not." (Jonah i. 4-6.)
"And the tidings reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from
his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered him with sack-
cloth, and sat in ashes. And he made proclamation and published
through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying,
Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them
not feed, nor drink water; but let them be covered with sackcloth,
both man and beast, and let them cry mightily unto God : yea, let
them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that
is in his hands. Who knoweth w^hether God will not turn and re-
pent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?"
(Jonah iii. 6-9.)
"Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height
was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it
up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. . . . Then
the satraps, the deputies, and the governors, the judges, the treas-
urers, the counselors, the sherififs, and all the rulers of the prov-
inces, were gathered together unto the dedication of the image that
Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the
image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then the herald cried aloud,
To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that at
what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psal-
tery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the
golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up." (Dan. iii.
I, 3-5.)
PART I. THE UNIVERSALITY OF PRAYER.
Many thoughtful people are much troubled about prayer.
Some have dropped the habit of prayer and return to it only
in hours of stress and strain. Others continue the habit,
but have grave doubts as to its efficacy. A Christian
worker recently came and asked the bold question : "Do you
think the modern man of thought can consistently continue
to pray?" We must try to answ^er this.
First, I reminded my Christian friend that all men do
CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY? 141
pray. Men frequently go for long periods without uttering
prayers, even though their general attitude may be a prayer.
But in hours of great stress even the man who denies the
efficacy of prayer will break out in spoken prayer. There
seems to be a deep feeling in the human heart that the uni-
verse is adjusted to and responsive to the soul of man.
At least all men do at times call out for help, whether they
believe in a personal God or not. Dr. Nassau, describing the
prayers of the people in Central Africa, says : "They have
a ring of urgency. They are appeals for mercy, pathetic,
agonizing protestations, pitiful deprecations of evil."^ Car-
lyle is reported as saying : "Prayer is and remains the native
and deepest impulse of the soul of man." Even in the coun-
tries where the religions deny prayer, men continue to pray.
The Buddhist prays in spite of the fact that his religious
creed denies the existence of both God and man. Queer
enough, the followers of Gautama, the Buddha, have deified
him and pray before his image most ardently and regularly.
The savage is never too crude nor the man of culture too
civilized to pray. Prayer seems to be a universal habit.
But prayer is not simply asking things. It is the deep
trend of the life, the purpose, the motive, the supreme de-
sire. It is the yearning of the soul to find God. "This reli-
gious desire and effort of the soul to relate itself and all its
interests to God and his will is prayer in the deepest sense.
This is essential prayer. It is the soul's desire after God
going forth in manifestation."^ Prayer is much broader
than petition. It is praise, worship, and fellowship. It is
the whole attempt of the personality to bring itself into har-
mony with and properly relate itself to that higher kindred
power outside itself. All work as the expression of our de-
sires is prayer. All character-building is prayer. Petition is
just a part of the whole process, which is as broad as life.
^Nassau, "Fetichism in West Africa," pages 97, 98.
^Bowne, "The Essence of Religion," page 132.
14.2 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY IX. CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY?
"Bless Jehovah, O my soul.
O Jehovah my God, thou art very great;
Thou art clothed with honor and majesty:
Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment;
Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain;
Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters;
Who maketh the clouds his chariot;
Who walketh upon the wings of the wind;
Who maketh winds his messengers;
Flames of fire his ministers;
Who laid the foundations of the earth,
That it should not be moved forever.
Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a vesture;
The waters stood above the mountains.
At thy rebuke they fled;
At the voice of thy thunder they hasted away
(The mountains rose, the valleys sank down)
Unto the place which thou hadst founded for them."
(Ps. civ. 1-8.)
PART 11. DIFFICULTIES IN ANSWER TO PRAYER.
My religious worker went on to say that he believed in
prayer because it had a reflex influence. It brought the per-
son praying in harmony with the idea and purpose of his
prayer — that is, in that sense helped one to answer his own
prayer. As a universal habit he thought it had value.
"But," he continued, "how can God answer prayer in a
universe run according to fixed laws? In a world of nat-
ural order does prayer do anything?"
First, it was necessary to make sure that we knew what
he meant by the laws of nature. They are not entities or
things. They are neither matter, mind, nor force. They do
not rule or govern. Laws are simply our formulation of
the uniform method by which the universe is run. The
method is the result of a high intelligence, else there could
be neither uniformity nor method. The universe Is not run
by some mechanical necessity. There is a power behind the
uniformity of nature. The process in the universe is but
the perpetual expression of the will of God. The order of
nature is the order of God. Now, if God is the essence of
the universe and its order the expression of his will, then
CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAYf
143
he is free to express his will in advanced ways. Granted a
divine will and a sufficient cause, things may happen which
would not have happened had there not been prayer.
"Yes," said my friend, ''they may happen, but do they?
Will God dip into the world even if he can?" Here, again,
we were back to an old difficulty, the conception of an un-
changing world. God does not have to dip in ; he is already
in. He is not outside of his universe. The universe would
not run itself one minute if the activity of his will ceased.
"Then," said my inquirer, "if he is the all-pervading will,
can he change things without destroying all uniformity and
hence destroying all basis for scientific knowledge ?" Most
certainly he can. My will is a part of the natural order,
just as God's will is the all-inclusive element. Now, I
change things without destroying uniformity. A man
pitches me a ball. The law of gravity says that the ball
must fall to the ground ; but my will intervenes, and I catch
the ball. I have not destroyed the law of gravity. I have
only superinduced a higher law, the law of will. I have not
destroyed order, but I have changed things.
Indeed, all the work done by modern inventions of ma-
chinery, of wireless telegraphy, and all the rest is not a
destruction of natural order, but the superinducing of high-
er laws — of which we were formerly ignorant — into the
place of the natural order. As science discovers more and
more the laws of nature, we will increasingly be able to
bring about new results without changing one particle the
natural order. If man with his puny will can change
things, surely we cannot deny to God equal power. God
with his infinite knowledge of all the laws of the universe
may be able to answer any legitimate prayer I make by use
of law and not in spite of it.
144 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY IX. CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY?
"And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and
shall go unto him at midnight, and say to him. Friend, lend me three
loaves; for a friend of mine is come to me from a journey, and I
have nothing to set before him ; and he from within shall answer and
say, Trouble me not : the door is now shut, and my children are
with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee? I say unto you,
Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet
because of his importunity he will arise and give him as many as
he needeth. And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth;
and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. And of which of you
that is a father shall his son ask a loaf, and he give him a stone?
or a fish, and he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask
an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your
heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" (Luke
V. 13.)
PART III. DO WE NEED TO PRAY TO A GOOD GOD?
"Granted that God could answer prayer without destroy-
ing the order of the universe, I have a deeper difficulty,"
said my inquirer. "If he is an all-wise and good God, he
knows my needs and will give them to me without asking. If
he does not know my needs, he is not all-wise; and if he
knows but withholds, he is not good." At first sight this
seems like an unanswerable argument. It is certainly more
serious than the former difficulty. In order to clear the
question, we must ask what the purpose of life really is.
What is God trying to do with us here on earth? If we are
correct in supposing that he is trying to develop a race of
men who are fitted in character to associate with him and
to dwell together in harmony and peace, we at least have a
clue to our answer. The religious education of the race
CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAYf
145
means bringing to fruitage in the individual the spirit of
love, sympathy, kindliness, unselfishness, and brotherhood.
How may such qualities be developed? Experience has
taught us that such qualities of character can be cultivated
only by being practiced. We learn sympathy by sympa-
thizing. We learn to love by loving. We grow unselfish
by sharing. We must, therefore, have the chance to serve
others if we would grow in character. It is for this reason,
doubtless, that God plans to give each of us the largest pos-
sible share in the ongoing of his kingdom. He must often
wait until we want certain things enough to ask for them,
and he must wait to do certain things until some of his chil-
dren get sufficiently interested in others of his children to co-
operate with God in meeting their needs.
The Young Men's Christian Association is a great organ-
ization. It is doing a wonderful work for the young men of
to-day. I suppose it was greatly needed fifty years before
it was founded. I am sure that God knew the needs of
young men then just as he sees their needs now; and yet he
waited in order that George Williams and many others like
him might see the vision, work for its realization, and so a
whole generation of men might be trained in unselfish serv-
ice. We know that God does actually wait for men to co-
operate with him. Why should we doubt that he has good
reasons for waiting until we will cooperate by prayer?
Viewed in this way, prayer is not man's attempt to make
God do something which he wants done. It is man's at-
tempt to put himself in such an attitude that God can work
through him in accomplishing his will for men. It is not
dictation to God or begging God to be good to his own chil-
dren; it is putting ourselves into his hands for his service.
In this way, and in this way alone, can God train us in all
the fullness of character.
10
146 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY IX. CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY?
"Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias;
and the Lord said unto him in a vision, Ananias. And he said. Be-
hold, I am here, Lord. And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go
to the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of
Judas for one named Saul, a man of Tarsus : for behold, he prayeth;
and he hath seen a man named Ananias coming in, and laying his
hands on him, that he might receive his sight. But Ananias an-
swered, Lord, I have heard from many of this man, how much evil
he did to thy saints at Jerusalem : and here he hath authority from
the chief priests to bind all that call upon thy name. But the Lord
said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to
bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of
Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for
my name's sake. And Ananias departed, and entered into the house ;
and laying his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Je-
sus, who appeared unto thee in the way which thou camest, hath
sent me, that thou mayest receive thy sight, and be filled with the
Holy Spirit." (Acts ix. 10-17.)
PART IV. PRAYER ANSWERED THROUGH SUGGESTION.
Dr. Edward I. Bos worth has made a suggestion con-
cerning answer to prayer which is worthy of careful
thought. He says that most prayers which a mature Chris-
tian prays can be answered if God is able to put a thought
into the mind of a man. Most of the legitimate prayers will
naturally be with reference to other persons. Not that we
may not pray for other things; but, on the whole, most of
our prayers could be answered by persons. Now, if God
can put into the minds of other persons the proper thoughts,
most such prayers may be thereby granted.
Merrell Vories, a young college man, went to Japan as a
government school-teacher. He was very active out of
school hours in personal work among his students. Soon
he had won a number to the Christian life. The Buddhist
CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY?
147
priests then became angry and secured his discharge from
the school. Vories found himself in a foreign land without
much knowledge of the language, without a position, with-
out a mission board behind him. Besides, he was the target
of bitter criticism and was liable to physical persecution.
What should he do? If he left, his little band of followers
would soon be scattered. If he stayed, he faced hardship,
persecution, and physical evil. He and his students prayed
long and earnestly. Finally it was decided that he should
stay, cost what it would. He set about finding a livelihood.
Two days later a draft for twenty-five dollars came to him
in the mail. This draft was renewed a month later, and so
for two years it arrived every month without Vories know-
ing whence it had come. An American business man
traveling in Japan heard the story of Vories's work and
said he was deeply impressed that he should send some
money there. He followed the deep impression, thus en-
abling Vories to stay at his post and push his work. I be-
lieve God suggested that thought to the American busi-
ness man and thus answered Merrell Vories's prayer.
Why should I doubt that God can put a thought into a
man's mind? I can do it by blundering word, by written
sign, by expression of face, by many means. Surely God is
not more limited than I. Thought is the reaction from stim-
ulus, and we all know that the strongest possible stimulus to
thought is personality. Why should we doubt God's ability
to suggest a thought to a human person and thus answer
prayer?
148 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY IX. CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY?
"Now when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles*
hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, saying,
Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay my hands, he
may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said unto him. Thy silver
perish with thee, because thou hast thought to obtain the gift of
God with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter : for
thy heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this thy wick-
edness, and pray the Lord, if perhaps the thought of thy heart shall be
forgiven thee. For I see that thou art in the gall of bitterness and
in the bond of iniquity. And Simon answered and said, Pray ye for
me to the Lord, that none of the things which ye have spoken come
upon me." (Acts viii. 18-24.)
PART V. NEGATIVE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER.
There is much false talk about the answer to prayer.
Every prayer may be answered, and yet few answered just
as we felt they ought to be answered. This leads us to lay
down the first negative law o£ prayer.
Prayer is not making demands on God. It is an attempt
to put ourselves in harmony with his will. To demand
means that we suppose we know better what we need than
God knows. If so, we are the God, and the one to whom
we pray is a puppet. "Thy will be done" is no overpious
phrase. It is simply the recognition of God's infinity and
our finitude.
Again, we cannot legitimately ask God to do for us what
we can do for ourselves. We may commune with God
about any matter that affects our lives, but we may not ask
him to relieve us of the responsibility of living. If a teacher
of mathematics solves all the problems for the pupils, there
will result a dull class. We must learn by mastering. If
God's purpose is to build character in me, he must let me
struggle with some of the problems of life. He cannot do
all things for me.
CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY? 149
Again, I may not demand that God free me from the pain
which is consequent upon my sinfulness. If I am careless
about the sanitation of my premises and get typhoid, I need
not expect God to save me from all suffering. I may pray
for wisdom to avoid such suffering again, and I may pray
for wisdom in overcoming the present disease, if his wisdom
sees fit to help me. Prayer is not a kind of fire escape to
keep us out of difficulties.
Lastly, we may not ask that which is selfish. God can
never lend himself to a selfish scheme. No good parent will
give to one child what will injure another one of the chil-
dren in the home. Such action would indicate a partial or
prejudiced parent. God cannot help me in my business if my
business injures others. I cannot ask God to give me wis-
dom that I may outwit and defraud my neighbor. We said
any prayer could be answered, granted there was a divine
free will and a sufficiently important cause. But selfishness
is never sufficiently important. A selfish desire weighs as
zero in the sight of a just and loving God. He who would
really pray must not demand; he must not shirk; he must
be willing to bear his own evil; he must not desire to suc-
ceed at the expense of others. No such prayer can be legit-
imately answered in the affirmative.
I50 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY IX. CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY?
"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber,
and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and
thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in pray-
ing use not vain repititions, as the Gentiles do : for they think that
they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like
unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of,
before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our
Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom
come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this
day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have
forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver
us from the evil one. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your
heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men
their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
(Matt. vi. 6-15.)
PART VI. POSITIVE CONDITIONS FOR PRAYER.
If prayer is to be availing, surely it must have laws or
standards.
First of all, it would seem that we must ever keep fore-
most the meaning of prayer as the attempt of a man to find
harmony with God. We will be aided in this by the study
of God's world, by studying the lives of other Christians,
and by meditation. Prayer is not so many words said, so
many beads counted, so many wheels turned, so many kneel-
ings and uprisings. Prayer is the soul's attempt to know
and do the will of God. It must, therefore, be characterized
by deep humility and openness to the truth.
The second condition of real prayer is earnestness. No
good father gratifies every whim of his child. That would
be to spoil the child and weaken the character. If we are to
be developed in life, God must give us a chance to live for
some things, to struggle, to agonize. This is perhaps the
meaning of the parable of the importunate neighbor. The
CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY? 151
man in his bed did not give his neighbor bread simply be-
cause of his much knocking, but because it revealed his dead-
earnestness. I cannot pray for missions if I am not dead in
earnest enough to do all in my power for missions — my
money, my influence, my life must be at the disposal of
God. No halfway, lazy prayer indifferently requested could
be answered if God remain true to his purpose of training.
Thirdly, I must be interested in the things in which God
is interested, if I am to pray. This is the positive way of
saying that I must not be selfish. Occasionally as I work
in the colleges I find a boy to whose parents I write in trying
to help him. Such a letter is an open sesame to the hearts
of those parents. I am interested in their supreme interest
— their boy — and, of course, I get a hearty response. No
man can really pray who is not interested in his brother
men. He has no basis for prayer. God is interested in
men ; and if I am to find harmony with God, I cannot hate
men. We dare not despise any — white, black, or yellow —
for if we do, we cannot effectually pray. We can only ask
God to help us get in the attitude to pray.
Lastly, if we are to be really praying men, we must un-
dertake tasks too big for our human powers. When we
have a superhuman task, we are drawn back to God. No
man will pray so long as he thinks he does not need help in
meeting the demands of life. But try a great task for God.
Try to change the life of a wayward companion. Try to
clear up the moral conditions in a college or the civic condi-
tions in a rotten city, and you will find need for God. Let
us undertake such great things for him that we can do them
only through him, and we will have to pray.
152 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY IX. CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY?
"But I said, Not so, Lord: for nothing common or unclean hath
ever entered into my mouth. But a voice answered the second time
out of heaven, What God hath cleansed, make not thou common.
And this was done thrice : and all were drawn up again into heaven.
And behold, forthwith three men stood before the house in which we
were, having been sent from Csesarea unto me. And the Spirit bade
me go with them, making no distinction. And these six brethren
also accompanied me; and we entered into the man's house." (Acts
xi. 8-12.)
PART VII. PRAYER A WORKING FORCE.
When prayer meets the conditions of the last two studies,
it becomes a dominating force in the life, and it begins to
achieve its objects. "This is true, in the first place, because
a central craving organizes all the faculties of our lives
about itself and sets mind and hands to do its bidding. Of
the three ways in which men cooperate with God — working,
thinking, and praying — a cursory view might suggest that
praying is a somewhat superfluous addition. Dominant de-
sire gathers up the scattered faculties, centers the mind,
nerves the will, drives hard toward the issue."^ Mr. Fos-
dick further goes on to say that this dominant desire as
prayer organizes other forces around it which help to make
the answer possible. It becomes a working force. It cer-
tainly releases the energies of God into a man's life and
makes him capable of doing what he could not have other-
wise done.
Prayer has undoubtedly been the dynamic of all great
Christian advances. "For many years it has been my prac-
tice in traveling among the nations to make a study of the
sources of the spiritual movements which are doing most to
vitalize and transform individuals and communities. At
times it has been difficult to discover the hidden springs ; but
invariably, where I have had the time and patience to do so,
I have found it in an intercessory prayer life of great real-
ity."'
It cannot be doubted that God has great reserves of power
^Fosdick, "The Meaning of Prayer," page 145.
^Mott, "Intercessors : The Primary Need," page 24.
CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY? 153
at his disposal and that the one means of access to this pow-
er is prayer. It is for this reason that most great workers
have been great prayers. Prayer couples the power of God
with the instrumentality of man and makes great power
available in the world. ''Every grave crisis in the expansion
of Christianity which has been successfully met has been
met by the faithfulness of Christ's disciples in the secret
place. That there is a necessary connection between the
progress of Christians on the one hand and, on the other,
the revealing of Christ's plan, the raising up of workers, and
the releasing of the great spiritual forces of the kingdom
is a fact as clearly established as any fact can be estab-
lished."'
I have noticed that in those colleges where there were few
men, if any, who believed in prayer, no great transformation
of life has been possible. But in those colleges where there
have been a few earnest students praying, great moral
changes have come about. It seems as if the spiritual forces
of the universe align themselves with the intense, eager,
earnest prayer of a Christian man. No one can study mis-
sionary movements without realizing that prayer has been
wielded by the missionaries as a mighty working force. If
we expect to do work beyond the mediocre in grade and in
transforming power, we must be men of prayer.
God has the abundant resources to transform the world,
and the man who puts himself in the attitude to use these
forces by his prayer life becomes a mighty worker for right-
eousness.
^Mott, "Intercessors: The Primary Need," page 24.
STUDY X.
The Reality of Religion.
156 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION.
"(For when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the
things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto them-
selves ; in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts,
their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one
with another accusing or else excusing them)." (Rom. ii. 14, 15.)
"That they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him
and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." (Acts
xvii. 27.)
PART I. RELIGION AS THE PROJECTION OF OUR OWN
DESIRES.
Not a few thoughtful people are asking whether there is
any reality corresponding to our conceptions of religion.
An old college friend of mine, now a prominent professor
in a great State university, came to me sometime since with
just this difficulty. He had once been an ardent Christian;
but, with some more or less superficial study of religion, he
had come to the conclusion that it was purely a fiction of the
imagination. There is also a group of psychological think-
ers who feel that religion is just functional in origin — that
is, it arises out of the activities of our own persons. It is
the resultant of a certain mental stimulus arising out of
social contacts. According to the functional theory, religion
is just man's adjustment to a certain part of his environ-
ment. This definition of religion we would readily accept if
the psychologist would allow us to define that environment
in terms of a personal God.
This conception of religion arises out of a one-sided phi-
losophy or a one-sided psychology. In our time of special-
ization there is danger that men shall lose perspective.
Pratt, in his "Psychology of Religious Belief," justly calls
attention to the fact that intellect and logic alone cannot
give us truth. "The one thesis which I wish to defend, the
one contention for which I really care, is that the whole man
must be trusted as against any small portion of his nature,
such as reason or perception."^ Whenever men have trust-
^Pratt's "Psychology of Religious Belief," page 27.
THE REALITY OF RELIGION,
157
ed one side of their nature alone, it has landed them in er-
ror. Of course the religionist has been accused of just this
one-sidedness. It has been said that he follows not his rea-
son, but his impulses.
The human heart's best; you prefer
Making that prove the minister
To truth; you probe its wants and needs.
And hopes and fears, then try what creeds
Meet those most aptly — resolute
That faith plucks such substantial fruit
Wherever these two correspond/
The critic claims that out of our one-sided desire for a
religious life we create our whole system.
Did not we ourselves make Him?
Our mind receives but what it holds, no more.
First of the love, then; we acknowledge Christ —
A proof we comprehend His love, a proof
We had such love already in ourselves,
Knew first, what else we should not recognize,
'Tis mere projection from man's inmost mind.^
There is certainly truth in this last quotation. If we did
not have the Godhood in us, we could never comprehend
God. We cannot know anything which is completely and
absolutely foreign to our nature. The fact that we do com-
prehend God indicates that we are enough like him to come
to know him. But, on the other hand, this does not prove
that all our knowledge of him comes from our own imagin-
ings. If religion is the result of pure imagination, how does
it come that all peoples have it? No other form of pure
imagination has universal sway. There must be some deep-
er explanation.
^Browning's "Easter-Day."
^Browning's "A Death in the Desert."
158 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION,
"As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
So panteth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God :
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
These things I remember, and pour out my soul within me.
How I went with the throng, and led them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping holyday.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
And why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him
For the help of his countenance." (Ps. xlii. 1-5.)
PART II. THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION.
There is planted deep in man a desire for full and com-
plete development. The meaning and method of this devel-
opment vary greatly with different groups, but the aspiring
impulse is universal. It is likewise universally recognized
that man needs help in this struggle for development. He
feels that there is something without him which can help to
make or mar his destiny. He feels that his inner life can
be made complete only by the proper adjustment to this
outer influence, and religion is just man's attempt to make
this proper adjustment. This need for proper adjustment
is just the deepest fact of human consciousness. The
savage has need for such an adjustment and attempts to
make it. Fetishism, animism, and totemism are the results.
"At one pole of being," says Tailing, "the savage instinc-
tively recognizes his [God's] existence. At the other phi-
losophy needs God as the fundamental pr^mise."^ Kant, in
his "Critique of Practical Reason," says : "I find an ought
within which compels me to complete development. But I
cannot attain complete development if the universe is bad at
heart and hence against me. Hence I must believe that the
universe is for me, that there is a God at the heart of things,
and that my self -development is proper adjustment of my-
self to this God." This is religion.
^Tailing, "The Science of Spiritual Life," page 49.
THE REALITY OF RELIGION. 159
This sense of oughtness and its relationship to a higher
power is universal, and all religious experiences have grown
out of it. "The origin of religion consists in the fact that
man has the infinite within him, even before he is himself
conscious of it and whether he recognizes it or not.""" Euc-
ken's "solid nucleus" of religion is the upspringing of God
within the human soul. Jevons says that the "Continuum of
Religion" is the direct and convincing revelation of God to
the human soul, and every historian of religion must accept
the facts of this religious consciousness.
It is generally agreed that the facts of religious conscious-
ness are universal. What does that imply as to their real-
ity? It means that there must be truth behind these facts,
or else universal human nature is a lie. It does not mean
that the forms of religion may not be filled with error, but
it does mean that the religious impulse out of which these
forms spring must have reality in it. If I cannot trust uni-
versal nature to tell the truth here, even though mixed with
error, then I cannot trust human nature at all. There is no
way of finding truth, and I am landed in nescience. But the
mind will not rest in negation. We know that we can find
truth, and we know that we find it by trusting our whole
personality. Eucken might well have said of all knowledge
and experience what he said of religion : "In the conviction
of the author, religion is able to attain a secure position and
an effective influence only when it is founded upon the
whole of life and not upon a particular so-called faculty of
the soul, be it intellect, feeling, or will."^
If we trust the whole nature of man, it undoubtedly tells
us that religion Is a reality and that the only way to deny the
truth is to discredit human nature. We cannot discredit
human nature and still continue to think. We must, there-
fore, accept the fact of religion as real. The forms of reli-
gion may be false, but the central fact of religious con-
sciousness as a relation to a superior being is as deep as
human life itself and cannot be set aside.
^Tiele, "Elements of the Science of Religion," Volume II., page
230.
^Eucken, "The Truth of Religion," Preface.
l6o CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION.
"Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or
else believe me for the very works* sake." (John xiv. ii.)
"And one of the multitude answered him, Teacher, I brought unto
thee my son, who hath a dumb spirit. . . . And he asked his
father, How long time is it since this hath come unto hm? And he
said. From a child. And ofttimes it hath cast him both into the fire
and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything,
have compassion on us, and help us. And Jesus said unto him, If
thou canst ! All things are possible to him that believeth. Straight-
way the father of the child cried out, and said, I believe; help thou
mine unbelief," (Mark ix. 17, 21-24.)
PART III. THE MINIMUM OF BELIEF.
It cannot be denied that we are in an age of unsettled
faith. Historical research has undermined old beliefs, and
criticism of the Biblical texts has made many uncertain of
the exact authority of many passages. Many a student of
religion is saying that he cannot think his way through the
whole maze of the difficulties. He does not wish to be in-
sincere and claim to believe that about which he knows
nothing. Neither does he desire to throw away that which
has given him power and may ultimately prove to be the
truth. What, then, can he accept as absolutely abiding and
on that build to a larger faith ? A man at the University of
Texas came to me in just this frame of mind on my last
visit to that institution. What can we say to such a man ?
First of all, we can say to him that there are certain fun-
damental facts which he can accept without any knowledge
of historical or textual or any other form of criticism. He
can accept the statement of the last study, that the religious
consciousness is a universal reality. He can test this and
verify it by his own nature. He knows that there is aspira-
THE REALITY OF RELIGION. l6l
tion for something bigger than himself. He feels that right
adjustment of his inner life to this something bigger will
bring life. Of this much he may be sure, for it is a part of
universal consciousness.
Secondly, he believes in the law of righteousness. No
man in his senses can doubt this. He may not know how
we arrive at our judgments of what is righteous, but he feels
within him a sense of right and wrong. He approves his
own life when he lives righteously and condemns his life
when he does unrighteousness.
"But," said my Texas student, "what is right, and what is
wrong?" I tried to show him that the final example of right
life was given us in Jesus Christ. Regardless of whether
Jesus was more than a man or not, regardless even of wheth-
er he was a Person or not, the picture we have of him in the
Gospels is the best picture we have ever had of true right-
eousness. This the whole world has had to acknowledge.
Furthermore, Jesus set for us the final standard. (See
Study VHL, Part H.)
That there is a universal religious consciousness, that
righteousness is the highest law of life, that Jesus is the best
embodiment of righteousness we know, and that Jesus gave
us a permanent standard of morals, my skeptical Texas stu-
dent granted. "There," I said, "you have a big foundation
on which to build." Give yourself without reserve to these
things which you can accept and which perhaps all men can
accept. Every man must take the best he knows and must
live it to the limit of his ability. I must be true to my best
conception until I find one that is better. And here is the
beginning of personal religion. No man has a right to wait
until he has solved all questions before starting to live what
he already knows. To be religiously true to the best we
know now is the surest way of knowing better to-morrow.
II
1 62 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION.
"But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not
cast our demons, but by Beelzebub the prince of the demons. . . .
Therefore I say unto you, Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven
unto men ; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.
And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall
be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit,
it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in that which
is to come." (Matt. xii. 24, 31, 32.)
PART IV. THE ATTITUDE OF THE TRUTH SEEKER.
One day Jesus healed a blind, dumb lunatic; and the
carping and critical Pharisees said that he did it by the pow-
er of the devil. Forced by human desire for understanding
to attribute the deed to some great power, but unwilling to
see any good either in Jesus or in his works, they attribute
the whole thing to the influence of evil. Christ's rebuke is
sharp and clear. He says that the sin of misunderstanding
him is pardonable; but when one so long shuts his eyes to
truth that he cannot see the difference between truth and
falsehood, he has committed what Mark calls the eternal sin.
It is an eternal sin just because it closes the gates of truth
and locks them so that no truth can get access. It is a terri-
ble warning against trifling with one's conscience, against
failure to live up to the best we know. Lack of fidelity here
will undo the whole life, for it changes the whole stream of
impressions which come to us. It shuts out the best ; it opens
us only to the worst. Playing fast and loose with one's
sense of truth not only blurs moral perceptions, but blots
out all distinctions between right and wrong.
To the truth seeker, therefore, nothing is more essential
than an open and aggressive attitude toward truth. It is
not enough to live to the best we know to-day. We must
seek after truth. It is not a sin to be ignorant to-day, but it
THE REALITY OF RELIGION, 163
is a sin to be satisfied with that ignorance. It is not indica-
tive of lack of force or character for a man to fall down in
a puddle of mud; but if he stays there, we would count him
an imbecile. There is no sin in having one*s mind vexed
with doubt, but it is a sin to sit quietly and nurse one's
doubts without trying to solve them. One of the greatest
dangers of our time is that we shall be satisfied with nega-
tion. In no other realm are we so likely to make this mis-
take as in religion.
The man who wants to be fair to religion must search for
truth. He must not be passive. This is too important a field
for him to assume a negative attitude. Secondly, he must
act on all the truth he has day by day. He who will not do
these two things is neither honest nor scientific.
1 64 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION.
"If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching,
whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself." (John vii.
17.)
PART V. THE WILL TO BELIEVE.
Speaking of academic audiences, Professor James says :
"Paralysis of their native capacity for faith and timorous
abulia in the religious field are their special forms of men-
tal weakness."^ In his essay on "The Will to Believe,"
James points out that the great fear of our age is that we
shall believe some error. We are even willing to forego
finding truth if we can be sure to keep ourselves free from
all erroneous opinion. "Better go without belief forever
than believe in a lie." Assume the part of absolute impar-
tiality to all truth. Make sure that you allow no bias to get
into your thinking. Have no enthusiasm for any truth, lest
it might prove to have a modicum of error. This is the spir-
it of our age.
"But," says Professor James, "this is precisely the poorest
way of finding truth. If you want an absolute duffer in an
investigation, you must, after all, take the man who has no
interest whatever in the results. He is the warranted inca-
pable, the positive fool."^
He further points out that in all moral and religious ques-
tions there can be no external proofs. One can never write
"Q. E. D." after any religious statement. The very fact of
lack of proof gives moral truth its efficacy. Make it an iron-
clad and undoubtable fact that a certain action will bring
good or evil, and the moral quality has been taken out of it.
It is only a dolt who would fail to choose it if it meant abso-
lute and certain good, or leave it alone if its consequences
7ames, "The Will to Believe," Preface. ""Ibid., page 21.
THn REALITY OF RELIGION. 165
were utterly and surely evil. All moral questions present a
living option, as James would call it — that is, there is always
a possibility of different standards of worth in that action,
"Now," says James, "we may, if we will, throw ourselves on
the side of good. We may take the chance of getting some
evil with our good and of losing some other good. But we
can choose. We can accept the theory of the right as our
working hypothesis. Religion is a forced opinion so far as
that good goes. We cannot escape the issue by remaining
skeptical and waiting for more light, because (although we
do avoid error in that way, if the religion be untrue) we lose
the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively
choose to disbelieve."^ "Skepticism, then, is not avoidance
of option. It is option of a certain particular kind of risk.
Better risk loss of truth than chance of error."^
The will to believe, therefore, is finding what has the best
appearance of truth and throwing ourselves into it to verify
it by experience. It is not blindly gulping down something
on authority ; it is taking a worthy hypothesis and testing it
out In experience. This the scientist does in every advance
he makes. This the seeker after religion must do. We must
make the great adventure and correct our conceptions as
new truth is made clear to our souls.
^'James, "The Will to Believe," page 26. ""Ibid,
l66 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION.
"Who shall ascend into the hill of Jehovah?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart ;
Who hath not lifted up his soul unto falsehood,
And hath not_ sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive a blessing from Jehovah,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation."
(Ps. xxiv. 3-5.)
"He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that
loveth me : and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I
will love him, and will manifest myself unto him." (John xiv. 21.)
"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."
(Ps. xci. I.)
"But they that wait for Jehovah shall renew their strength; they
shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be
weary; they shall walk, and not faint." (Isa. xl. 31.)
PART VI. HINDRANCES TO REALITY.
A STUDENT at the University of North Carolina was trou-
bled because religion did not "take hold of him/' as he ex-
pressed it. He was sure that there was a God and that reli-
gion was man's relationship to that God, but somehow he
could not let the impression find him. "It is to be carefully
noted/' says Dr. King, "a thing may be unreal to us because
it seems to have no living connection with the rest of our
life or because it seems to have no special contribution to
make to life. It must not be so different that it cannot be
believed to belong to the same world and to the same human
nature and to the same God as the rest of life, and yet it
must be seen to be different enough to have a genuine and
indispensable contribution of its own to make."^
One group of persons fail to find reality in religion be
cause they fail to realize that God is a living Person and can
be approached as other persons. Religion is not like friend-
ship; it is friendship. It has definite laws of growth, just
as has any other friendship. God is not far away. He is
^King, 'The Seeming Unreality of Spiritual Life," page 15.
THE REALITY OF RELIGION. 167
tiot off in the corner of the universe. He is a Person and
can be met as a person.
On the other hand, some have not felt the reahty of reli-
gion because, as a kind of mystical experience, it has not
seemed to add anything to life. It has seemed to them that
it might add a degree of peace in hours of loneliness, but
that it could make a man a better worker in a workaday
world has never dawned on them. But if God is personal,
then his contact with me can give me the same kind of in-
spiration as fellowship with other kindred souls. It is a
commonplace fact that we can work better if we have sym-
pathetic understanding and fellowship in our work. If God
is a real Person, he can give us just this fellowship. He
therefore can and does do something for us.
Again, others have found no reality in religion because
they have expected to know God easily, quickly, and exactly ;
and failing in this, they find religion unreal. Such persons
should remember that no personal relationship is complete.
Think how little we really know about our best friends, our
mothers, our sisters and brothers. It is hard to break away
the veil that hangs between two personalities. Strive as we
may, we can never quite comprehend another soul. How
much less will we be able to fully comprehend the infinite
Soul!
Yet once more we fail to find reality in religion because
we expect to experience God before we have met the condi-
tions. Functional psychology says that we act first and then
feel afterwards. We demand the overwhelming sense of
God before we have met the conditions which would bring
a convincing experience. Dr. King reminds us that "the
highest things everywhere require complete commitment.
They give themselves only where all is risked. No tempo-
rizing, half-hearted experiment here will give results. The
meaning of a genuinely useful love, for example, does not
yield itself to any calculating experiment."^
We cannot try God for a period and then tear away if we
are not satisfied, for the very fact that we have not risked all
will vitiate an experiment. This is not a special demand of
religion ; it is a part with all personal relations. What man
ever held himself in reserve as he tried to win the heart of
a woman ? The very fact that he did not risk all would de-
feat the attempt which he made.
^King, "The Seeming Unreality of Spiritual Life," page 40.
l68 CHRISTIAN LIFR-^A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION.
"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things
are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on
these things. The things which ye both learned and received and
heard and saw in me, these things do: and the God of peace shall
be with you." (Phil. iv. 8, 9.)
"But we all, with unveiled face beholding as In a mirror the
glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory
to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit." (i Cor. iii. 18.)
PART Vn. LAWS OF GROWING REALITY.
The fundamental question is. What are the laws of a
growing sense of reality in any personal relationship?
The first law is to give careful heed to the concrete ex-
pressions of God which we possess. If we wish to keep cer-
tain loved ones fresh in memory, we have their pictures on
our table, we put around us pieces of their handiwork, we
read as often as possible their words. We spend time put-
ting ourselves into the presence of their attitude of life.
Now, Jesus is the historical picture of God. He is the best
expression of what God can do in the realm of character.
He who would have his communion with God real will,
therefore, spend time with Christ. He will read the record
of his life. He will catch his matchless spirit of love and
sacrifice. He will give much heed to this concrete expres-
sion of God's life.
The second law is like unto this first : Stay persistently in
the presence of the facts of God. See what he has done in
the lives of men. Read his dealings with other men in other
times. Nothing is real to us which does not get persistent
attention. Neglect any element in your environment long
enough, and you will cease to be conscious of it. Give at-
tention to any fact in your environment, and you will see
new manifestations of that fact on every hand. The wonder
is that God is as real as he is. We so constantly and per-
sistently shut him from our field of attention that one won-
ders that he has any hold at all. We have no time in the
THE REALITY OF RELIGION. 169
morning for Bible study or prayer. The heat of the day is
filled with something else. At night we are too tired to think
of God. We must pay the inevitable price. God cannot
become real to us unless we pay the price of holding our-
selves, through Bible study, prayer, and meditation, in his
presence m.ore than most of us have.
The third law is the law of activity. He who would know
truth must act on what he has to the utmost of his ability.
The man who will not act on the simple fact that two plus
two are four will not be able to make progress in mathe-
matics. He who does not act on what he knows about God
need not hope to find more truth of God flooding his soul.
Action gives rise to thought, which in turn moves on to ac-
tion. So the process continues. It is a kind of endless
chain, but action has creative power for thought. He who
would have a realizing sense of God must act Godlike- so
fast as ever he knows how.
Fourthly, let one who wants to find God real live much
with persons to whom he is a reality. Biography in reading
and persons in daily life have molding power upon our sense
of reality. Live with these persons, and we will catch their
spirit of reality.
Lastly, seek to have your own experience and express it
in your own way. I cannot know and appreciate another
person just as you do. I must know him in my own way.
He makes a different impression on me from that he makes
on you.. Your experience with God will not be exactly my
experience. Be yourself and not another. Express your
experience in your own terms and not in the worn-out terms
of other people. Insist on finding out God rather than those
things about God. Make the great venture of throwing
yourself into the God program, and reality will slowly but
surely dawn in your life.
STUDY XI.
Sharing the Christian Message.
1^2 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY XL SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE.
"That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard,
that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and
our hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was
manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto
you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was
mainfested unto us) ; that which we have seen and heard declare v/e
unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us : yea, and
our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ."
(i John i. 1-3.)
"But the man from whom the demons were gone out prayed him
that he might be with him : but he sent him away, saying, Return to
thy house, and declare how great things God hath done for thee."
(Luke viii. z% 39-)
PART I. THE MEANING OF TESTIMONY.
Most men come to the appreciation of a new value
through the experience and testimony of others who have
become familiar with that particular value. If I am thrown
with Mr. Edison or Mr. Marconi, I will soon begin to be
interested in electricity. If I live with Mr. Burbank for a
short time, I will undoubtedly get interested in the breeding
of plants. So it is in every realm of life. I do not enter a
new field of interest purely on my own initiative, at least the
great mass of men do not.
In order that a man's testimony shall be contagious, he
needs to have had first-hand experience with the thing of
which he speaks. In a law court they want from a witness
the report of what he has seen or heard or experienced.
They do not want heresay or inferences or generalizations.
In other realms we are equally exacting. We are not much
interested in what a man thinks in general about Africa;
but if he has been there and has had experiences, we are
interested at once. A competent witness, therefore, is one
who has had experience with the facts under consideration
SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE. 173
and who can be trusted to report truthfully what he has
found. If either of these elements is lacking, his testimony
will be worthless. In the field of electricity an African in
the heart of the Congo would not be competent, because of
lack of experience. Neither would an electrical expert be
competent if there were reason to suppose it was to his
advantage to distort the facts. The testimony of a New
Testament scholar would be worthless in the field of elec-
tricity, and Mr. Edison's testimony would be equally worth-
less in the field of New Testament scholarship. It is not
every man who can pass judgment on religious life.
Testimony is the report of a real experience which one
has had with the facts of life. Life has many facts and
forces besides those we can see or hear, taste or smell. The
spiritual facts of life are just as real, though not so tangible,
as some other facts.
Men have gone into the laboratory of spiritual forces;
they have had certain soul impressions ; they have come out
and reported these experiences to men. This is religious
testimony. This is the meaning of the Bible. It is the ex-
perience we have had with God. To have such an experi-
ence and to report it is the most fundamental thing a Chris-
tian can do.
174 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY XL SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE.
"Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him,
of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, wrote, Jesus of Naza-
reth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him. Can any good
thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him. Behold, an
Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile ! Nathanael saith unto him,
Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Be-
fore Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw
thee. Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God;
thou art King of Israel." (John i. 45-49.)
PART II. THE TEST OF THE REALITY OF AN
EXPERIENCE.
Reality is that which is found to be in accord with the
estabUshed order of facts. I have a theory and try it out in
the laboratory. I find that the facts agree with my theory ;
so I say there is reality in the theory. It may be that later
facts will change my theory, but this does not discredit all
science. There is not a single scientific theory which has
not undergone some change, some development ; but sensible
men have not thrown away science. Indeed, it is the boast
of scientists that they are constantly finding new facts, and
this openness to development is the surest sign of the reality
of science. Science, therefore, survives all its own errors.
Queer enough, many men are not willing to allow to reli-
gion the same liberty. If it remains static, they say it is fos-
silized; if its conceptions develop, they say it has proved
false because it has had to incorporate new truth. Religion
being man's interpretation of his relationship to God, it
must of necessity be a growing quantity. As man grows in
understanding he must reinterpret. Religion is not thereby
proved unreal, but it is proved all the more real.
How, then, shall we know when our theory corresponds
to facts? How shall we test our own experience? The
chemist observes certain facts. He makes a theory to ac-
count for those facts and then tests his theory by repeated
experiments. If the experiments reveal other facts, he
changes his theory to suit the facts ; if they agree with the
theory, he feels that his theory is real. But he tries his ex-
SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE.
175
periments over and over again to make sure that he has
made no error. Then he calls in the experience of other
competent chemists. If they agree with him, he says the
theory is true, and it becomes a law of chemistry.
Religion must submit — and, indeed, has submitted — to
just this process. Men have observed certain spiritual phe-
nomena. They have made a religious theory to account for
these phenomena. They have then tested the theory out in
practice and in thought. Unfortunately for religion, all the
forces cannot be brought together in a laboratory, and the
theory cannot be tested out in a day or in a month or in a
year. It takes long periods scattered over wide areas of
human life to test its theories. But these theories are tested
and sifted. Little by little man has worked out better con-
ceptions of the meaning of religion.
An individual takes these laws and applies them to his
ov/n life and finds certain results. Others try then and get
similar results. So we say that these laws are real. They
correspond to the facts of life. The test of the reality of
an experience is the consensus of opinion of the competent
experimenters in any field of truth.
If our theory of religion is in accordance with the facts,
if those w^ho have met the conditions and are thus competent
experimenters say that it works, if we see it transform life,
it has stood the test and is verified as truth. Neither science
nor religion can be condemned or discarded simply because
some errors have crept in. The one supreme question is.
Does it work? No sane man can doubt that Christianity
does work, that it does transform life.
176 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY XI. SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE.
"He answered. The man that is called Jesus made clay, and
anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to Siloam, and wash : so
I went away and washed, and I received sight. And they said unto
him, Where is he? He saith, I know not. ... He therefore
answered, Whether he is a sinner, I know not: one thing I know,
that, whereas I was blind, now I see. . . . The man answered
and said unto them, Why, herein is the marvel, that ye know not
whence he is, and yet he opened mine eyes. We know that God
heareth not sinners : but if any man be a worshiper of God, and do
his will, him he heareth. Since the world began it was never heard
that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were
not from God, he could do nothing." (John ix. 11, 12, 25, 3033.)
PART in. THE NATURE OF OUR TESTIMONY.
A MAN who has lived out of harmony with God comes to
realize that he is wrong, unhappy and divided, dissatisfied.
He turns around in his life and finds certain experiences to
be the result. He finds that his sense of wrong is removed.
He feels that his whole personality is thrown into the battle
for better life. He finds a growing happiness and a sense
of growing satisfaction. Further, he finds that moral ques-
tions have taken on a new meaning. Things which before
seemed right now seem wrong. New forms of life make an
appeal to him. He has a new standard of moral values. He
finds himself interested in persons as he has not been inter-
ested before. He finds himself glad to serve other people
more unselfishly. He does not scorn men and criticize them
so severely as he once did. He reports these changes in sim-
ple fashion, and this is his testimony.
Testimony, being the report of reality, never has the air
of the superficial. It is genuine and cannot be considered as
hypocrisy. Neither will testimony take the nature of boast-
SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE. 177
ing. Personal character is not a thing about which any man
dare boast. There are always so many weaknesses that
boasting is shut out. But, on the other hand, man has had a
real experience. His gratitude for a larger life ought to bid
him to share his blessing with others.
Our testimony must not exceed our experience. We may
not in the beginning be able to say all the things in the above
testimony, but we at least have experienced part of the facts
there described. Let us report in our own terms what we
have experienced. Through this simple testimony others
may be led into the experience of these values.
Needs must there be one way, our chief,
Best way of worship; let me strive
To find it, and when found, contrive
My fellows also take their share.
This constitutes my earthly care;
God's is above it and distinct.
For I, a man, with men am linked.
And not a brute with brutes ; no good
That I experience must remain unshared.
— Browning's "Christmas Eve"
12
178 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY XL SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE.
"Now when they beheld the boldness of Peter and John, and had
perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled ;
and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.
And seeing the man that was healed standing with them, they could
say nothing against it." (Acts iv. 13, 14.)
PART IV. LIFE AS RELIGIOUS TESTIMONY.
"Ethical judgments are worth estimates. Their proof
is, first, that they commend themselves to the minds of men;
secondly, that they can be embodied in conduct. The funda-
mental proof of the Christian religion is, therefore, in the
realm of ethics, where its theory can be understood and
tested as other theories in ethics can be understood and test-
ed. If it fail us here, we may well surrender it altogether."^
Life and conduct are of the essence of our testimony.
A geologist may investigate the strata of the earth and
find certain facts which will not in the least be vitiated by
the immorality of his life. The amount of truth he finds
doubtless may depend on his spirit toward truth — that is,
his moral life — ^but, in so far as he does find truth, it is
independent of the state of his character. Not so with the
Christian. Christianity has to do with character; and if the
Christian's character does not square with his testimony, we
are apt to accept his character rather than his words as to
his final experience.
Religiously speaking, therefore, a man's testimony is his
life. The deepest desires of my life, the average of my
conduct, the normal attitude I have toward men — this is the
fundamental testimony which I can give. "What you are
thunders so loudly in my ear that I cannot hear what you
^Knox, "The Direct and Fundamental Proofs of the Christian Re-
ligion," pages 119, 12a
SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE. 179
say." This does not mean that our testimony need not be
expressed in words. It does need such expression. But the
real meaning is that our moral lives must correspond to what
we say, else our testimony will be void. Our daily life is
our experience, in the very nature of the case; and if that
experience is not increasingly moral in tone, then we have
no Christian testimony to give.
l8o CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY XI. SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE.
"In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a
throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above
him stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he
covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain
he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said. Holy, holy, holy,
is Jehovah of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the
foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him that cried,
and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me ! for
I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in
the midst of a people of unclean lips : for mine eyes have seen the
King, Jehovah of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me,
having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs
from off the altar : and he touched my mouth with it, and said, Lo,
this hath touched thy lips ; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy
sin forgiven. And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying. Whom
shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I;
send me." (Isa. vi. i-8.)
PART V. LACK OF EXPERIENCE AND ABILITY TO EX-
PRESS AN EXPERIENCE.
The fact that religious testimony springs out of life ac-
counts for the fact that many people refuse to bear religious
testimony. The real issue is that they have no experience to
repeat. Religion is not simply a knowledge of certain facts;
it is the experience of a fellowship, which experience even-
tuates in a changed life. While religion is not an enthusi-
asm, it begets enthusiasm. He who has no enthusiastic fel-
lowship with God is not apt to bear testimony to the reality
of God.
The greatest need of religious people is a sense of mes-
sage. It was this sense of message that sustained Christ in
the midst of all his persecutions. It was a sense of message
which sent Paul to the great cities of the Levant with an
enthusiasm that could not be dampened and a courage that
SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE. i8l
could not be daunted. Amos met God in the solitude of the
Tekoan hills, and the meaning and righteousness of God so
burned in his heart that no hatred or scorn or persecution
could keep him quiet. If we are to have a group of testify-
ing Christians, we must have those who really know God.
Isaiah saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and he immediately
said : "Here am I ; send me." It may not be unfair to say
that the amount and enthusiasm of your report are apt to be
in proportion to the depth and reality of your religious ex-
perience.
In some cases — ^yes, in many cases — I am persuaded that
Christians fail to bear testimony because they have not given
sufficient thought to the meaning of their experience to be
able to formulate it into words. They are afraid they will
blimder in their expression. While one respects the rever-
ence with which people approach so serious and momentous
a subject, yet one cannot allow the validity of the excuse.
The subject is so momentous for life that we must learn how
to express ourselves. We dare not give this excuse to God.
Suppose a father pleaded that he did not know how to make
money and hence could not provide for his children. We
would scorn his excuse and tell him that life depended on
his learning how to provide. Many of my friends are miss-
ing just the greatest thing in life, and I cannot give God the
excuse that I do not know how to help them. I must learn
how. This issue is momentous, and I am God's representa-
tive.
l82 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY XL SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE.
'Then said I, Ah, Lord Jehovah! behold, I know not how to
speak; for I am a child. But Jehovah said unto me, Say not, I am
a child; for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go, and
whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid
because of them; for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith Jehovah.
Then Jehovah put forth his hand, and touched my mouth; and Je-
hovah said unto me, Behold, I have put words in thy mouth." (Jer.
i. 6-8.)
PART VI. WE SHRINK FROM ALL PERSONAL
CONVERSATION.
Religion is very personal, and we shrink from free con-
versation concerning it, particularly with those whom we do
not know well. This feeling of reserve holds in every realm
of life. We do not want people to tell us all their private
affairs, neither do we want them to pry into our own per-
sonal business. Even the closest friendship does not give us
the right to throw down all reserve and demand entrance
into every secret of another heart. One must always walk
with reverence and awe in the presence of the deep things of
another soul.
But one dare not allow this argument to be carried too far.
That we do have a right and an obligation to share our ex-
periences with others, all life proves. If we did not share
our experiences, then every human soul would have to learn
from the beginning, and humanity could make no progress.
And it should be noted that all such sharing is of necessity
personal. The teacher is not simply dealing out so many
cold facts to his pupils. The best teacher is the man who
fuses his own soul with his facts and makes them live out
of his own experience. His teaching is his attempt to help
others see life as he sees it. Likewise the preacher is not a
phonograph grinding out theological facts. He is the inter-
preter of God to men. As such he must interpret God in
SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE. 183
the light of his own experience, which is a truly personal
matter. In like manner the artist is, through his art, trying
to interpret life for us — that is, trying to help us see life as
he through his experiences has seen it. If, then, I must not
enter the personal life of another, I cannot teach, I cannot
preach, I cannot write, I cannot paint — in fact, I must shut
myself off from men, for all real contact with men is per-
sonal. Of course this is the extreme, but it is the logical
outcome of the theory of the noninterference in personal
life.
The very fact that religion is so vital to persons means
that I must continue to share what I have found so valuable
to my own growth. My testimony need not be prying or
lacking in reverence, but it may be intensely in earnest. If
I have a real friend who has meant much to me, I am eager
to share that friend with other friends and even good ac-
quaintances. In like manner, if I know God and he means
life to Tf\e, I must of necessity desire to share this experi-
ence, ly some method or other I must break through all
reserve ^d share my treasure.
l84 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY XL SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE.
"How then shall they call on him In whom they have not be-
lieved? and how shall they beHeve in him whom they have not
heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall
they preach, except they be sent? even as it is written, How beauti-
ful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good things!"
(Rom. Xo 14, 15.)
"As it is written, There Is none righteous, no, not one; there is
none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God."
(Rom. ili. 10, II.)
PART VII. TESTIMONY AND THE NEEDS OF MEN.
Jesus believed that a mati who was not associated with
him was missing the full meaning of life. He was one who
was lost. ''He was away from those to whom he belonged
and was in danger of not getting back." With Jesus social
position, wealth, or other externals counted for nothing.
The rich man with his barns bursting with the harvest was
as completely lost and as absolutely in need as the veriest
beggar on the highway. Dives was far more to be pitied
than Lazarus.
We are always in danger of using false standards of value.
Because a man is respectable, because he has a good house,
because he wears good clothes, because he has a degree of
intellectual attainment, and such externals, we are apt to
think he is not in desperate need. But his inner life may be
pinched and starved and dying. Often people of the largest
external possessions have the least of internal richness, be-
cause overattention to the externals has robbed them of a
chance to know the meaning of personal fellowship.
We need to call ourselves back continually to the reality
of things. We need to remember that life consisteth not in
the abundance of the things it possesseth. We need to see
SHARING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE, 185
the depth of agony, the hunger, the longing of human per-
sons. We need to know that only fellowship with God can
fully satisfy. This will give new impulse and motive to our
personal work. Our prayer to God should daily be that we
may be sensitive to the deep needs of men. We are so con-
tinuously in the presence of need that our souls may become
callous.
Only he who continually sees the deep suffering and lone-
liness and waste of life and as continually reminds himself
of the sacredness of all life will be leading men to God, who
alone can save life. To be a personal worker is to be a co-
worker with God in saving needy men.
*TIs life, whereof our nerves are scant,
O, life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want.
— Tennyson's "The Two Voices."
STUDY XII.
Testimony and the Extension of the Kingdom.
l88 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY XII. TESTIMONY AND THE EXTENSION
OF THE KINGDOM.
"So thou, son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house
of Israel; therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them
warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man,
thou shalt surely die, and thou dost not speak to warn the wicked
from his way; that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood
will I require at thy hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked
of his way to turn from it, and he turn not from his way; he shall
die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul. And thou, son
of man, say unto the house of Israel: Thus ye speak, saying, Our
transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them ;
how then can we live? Say unto them. As I live, saith the Lord
Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked ; but that the
wicked turn from his way and live : turn ye, turn ye from your evil
ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" (Ezek. xxxiii. 7-11.)
PART I. CHRIST'S METHOD OF EXTENDING THE
KINGDOM.
It Is a most remarkable thing that Christ left no written
records of his life, even though he was engaged in founding
a world-wide empire. Neither do we have any intimation
that he instructed any biographer to set down his sayings.
He took twelve peasant people, kept them with him for three
years, filled them with his Spirit, helped them to catch his
message of God, and left them to spread his kingdom
through testimony. Christ to-day expects each Christian to
become a competent experimenter in the field of religious
truth. He expects that each one will win another. He
commanded us to go out and win others until all nations
have been won.
In the use of this method Christ himself set the example.
Many of his very greatest statements of truth were made to
one person, or at least to a very small group. One thinks of
TESTIMONY AND EXTENSION OF KINGDOM. 189
the wonderful conversation with Nicodemus, the woman at
the well, Zacchasus, and others ; and they went away with a
new sense of God in their souls.
This was also the method of the early Church. St. Paul
in the Roman prison saw one man after another for two
long years and bore his personal testimony to them. Philip
preached one of his best sermons to the man on the way
down to Gaza and brought a man face to face with God.
It is said of the Waldensians that every man was a per-
sonal worker. "He who has been a disciple for seven days
looks out some one whom he may teach in turn, so that there
is a continual increase."
This is the great method of work in mission fields even
to-day. When I was in Seoul, Korea, I met a great old
Christian, Ye Song Che. He was a member of the first le-
gation to represent Korea at our own national capital. Im-
prisoned after his return to Korea because of his radical
reform ideas, he became a Christian while in prison. He is
now the Religious Work Director of the Seoul Young Men's
Christian Association. His one great task is personal work.
He is absolutely untiring in his personal testimony. He is
a type of the native Christian. Jesus Christ means so much
to them that they at once want to share him with their
friends. We Americans are so accustomed to the gospel
message, we so little appreciate what it has done for us,
that we are very recreant about our duty.
But this is Christ's approved method, and the Church
must adopt it if Christianity is ever to be triumphant.
I90 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY XII. TESTIMONY AND THE EXTENSION
OF THE KINGDOM.
"But an angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and
go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem
unto Gaza : the same is desert. And he arose and went : and behold,
a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace,
queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come
to Jerusalem to worship; and he was returning and sitting in his
chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said
unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip
ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said,
Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I,
except some one shall guide me? And he besought Philip to come
up and sit with him. Now the passage of the scripture which he
was reading was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and
as a lamb before his shearer is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth:
in his humiliation his judgment was taken away: his generation who
shall declare? for his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch
answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet
this? of himself, or of some other? And Philip opened his mouth,
and beginning from this scripture, preached unto him Jesus." (Acts
viii. 26-35.)
PART II. MANY CAN BE REACHED ONLY THROUGH
PERSONAL TESTIMONY.
Dealing, as I do, with many large meetings for men, I am
constantly struck with the small number who hear the mes-
sage compared with those who do not. A very small per-
centage attend religious services o£ any kind. It would be
hazardous to say how large a percentage never attend, but
it is appalling when we think of the millions who never hear
the public presentation of the Christian message. If these
are ever to be won, it must be through the method of per-
sonal testimony.
Again, there are many who do occasionally attend religious
services, even those who attend regularly, who will never
TESTIMONY AND EXTENSION OF KINGDOM.
191
enter the Christian Hfe through any pubHc presentation.
Some of these have difficukies which must first be cleared
away, and this can never be done in pubHc address. I re-
member once a college man whom I asked to come to me
for an interview. He revealed a story of desperate struggle
in which I was able to show him some way out. After a
half hour's interview, he quietly but surely accepted the
Christian life. He would never have made a decision, he
would never have come for the interview voluntarily, but
was glad enough to come on invitation and eager enough to
talk when we were together. I am sure that it was the only
method to win him.
Another young man came up to speak to me after an ad-
dress. He asked if I knew his brother in China. I did
know him well. I suggested that I hoped he was one of the
Christian workers in the college. No, he was not. Then I
asked him if he would not think this over all the afternoon in
the wood shop where he was to work. He agreed that he
would and that he would be back that night. After my ad-
dress that night, I asked if any man wished to declare his
decision to be a Christian. That student was the first one
on his feet. I afterwards asked him what it was that led
into the Christian decision. His answer was : "I have been
to church almost every Sunday of my life. I have heard
enough preaching to convert every man in the State. But
you are the first man who ever said a word to me personally
about being a Christian." Yet his father was a Presbyterian
minister, and his brother was a missionary in China.
If the world is ever won for Christ, we must have a great
uprising of Christians who are willing to take their share in
tiie great task by reporting their own experience to others.
192 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY XII. TESTIMONY AND THE EXTENSION
OF THE KINGDOM.
"And Peter went down to the men, and said, Behold, I am he
whom ye seek : what is the cause wherefore ye are come ? And they
said, Cornelius a centurion, a righteous man and one that feareth
God, and well reported of by all the nation of the Jews, was warned
of God by a holy angel to send for thee into his house, and to hear
words from thee." (Acts x. 21, 22.)
"And Cornelius said. Four days ago, until this hour, I was keeping
the ninth hour of prayer in my house ; and behold, a man stood be-
fore me in bright apparel, and saith, Cornelius, thy prayer is heard,
and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God. Send
therefore to Joppa, and call unto thee Simon, who is surnamed
Peter; he lodgeth in the house of Simon a tanner, by the seaside.
Forthwith therefore I sent to thee; and thou hast well done that
thou art come. Now therefore we are all here present in the sight
of God, to hear all things that have been commanded thee of the
Lord." (Acts x. 30-33.)
PART III. MEN ARE WAITING FOR OUR TESTIMONY.
Many Christians fear to bear personal testimony, lest it
will be resented by those with whom they speak. My ob-
servation proves that this is not the case. For fifteen years
I have been a traveling secretary of the Young Men*s Chris-
tian Association, and I have made it my daily business to
talk with men about Christian life. Many thousands have
sat down with me quietly during these years. So far as I
know, only two of these students have resented my testi-
mony. One of them said that he was sorry he came because
I had told him the truth and he was not willing to follow it.
The other was a skeptical student who became very angry,
but a year later joined the Presbyterian Church. He
thanked me later for what I said to him and said that it had
been the means of bringing him to Christ.
Not only do men not resent being approached, but I am
TESTIMONY AND EXTENSION OF KINGDOM. 193
sure that many of them are wondering why we do not open
the conversation.
I shall never forget an experience I had some years ago
at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. After speaking one night,
I came downstairs and was just starting to leave the build-
ing. It was a rainy night ; and out on the porch, which was
very dimly lighted from within, there stood a young col-
lege man. I greeted him as I walked out and noticed
that his greeting was rather cordial. I then ventured the
question as to whether he had attended the meeting. His
reply was cordial again and in the affirmative. Made a little
more bold, I suggested that he was probably one of the
Christian workers. No, he was not even a Christian! I
asked him if he would mind going in and talking it over.
Imagine my amazement when he replied: "1 have been
standing here waiting for you to come out, hoping you would
ask me to do that." After half an hour he made a decision
for Christian life. Suppose I had missed that chance !
Once at a Northfield Conference I knew a young man
from Yale who said he had come down to this Conference
with the delegation, thinking that surely some man would,
in that place and in that atmosphere, speak to him about the
Christian life. One of our international student secretaries
of the Young Men's Christian Association told me that his
roommate in college, a prominent athlete, had to make this
secretary talk to him about religious life. What must people
think of the value we put upon our Christian experience
when we are so slow to share its blessings ?
The field is ripe unto the harvest, but the laborers are
few. Let us pray the Lord of the harvest to thrust us forth
and make us bold to do this work.
13
194 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY XII. TESTIMONY AND THE EXTENSION
OF THE KINGDOM.
"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savor,
wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but
to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of
the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light
a lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth
unto all that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before
men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father
who is in heaven." (Matt. v. 13-16.)
"So the woman left her waterpot, and went away into the city,
and saith to the people, Come, see a man, who told me all things that
ever I did : can this be the Christ ? They went out of the city, and
were coming to him." (John iv. 28-30.)
"And from that city many of the Samaritans believed on him
because of the word of the woman, who testified, He told me all
things that ever I did." (John iv. 39.)
PART IV. SIMPLE TESTIMONY EFFECTIVE.
Perhaps more men are kept from bearing personal testi-
mony by the fear of its ineffectiveness than by any other
thing. They feel that they are such amateur experimenters
in the field of religious truth that their testimony could not
possibly be helpful. Such people should remember that a
real experience is a most wonderful phenomenon. People
are alw^ays interested in real experience, whether religious
or otherwise. If I wish to interest another person in some
phase of science, I will report some simple experience I have
had in that field, and soon interest springs up in the other.
One's testimony does not need to be exhaustive; it needs
only to be real.
Somehow or other the forces of personal life have been
so arranged that just the least word from one will help
another into the Christian kingdom.
TESTIMONY AND EXTENSION OF KINGDOM.
195
At a college in which I was giving a series of addresses
recently there was an outstanding graduate student. In his
undergraduate days he had captained every Varsity team
and had held almost every post of honor which the students
could give. But he was not a Christian. I tried hard to get
at him, but he would slip out of the hall at the close of the
meetings before I could get to him. Finally a friend asked
him to come to see me. He came. We had not talked ten
minutes until he said: "I see it now, and I can do that.'*
He is now an active Christian worker. All he needed was
the smallest possible push, and he stepped over into the
Christian kingdom. It often does not take much.
H. Clay Trumbull, who was both a great preacher and a
great personal worker, said that he knew of more men won
to Christ through his personal conversation than through
his public ministry, even though he had preached to many
thousands. Every man who has tried this method of ex-
tending the number of Christ's followers is amazed at the
way in which God can use the simplest sort of testimony to
bring others into his fellowship.
The main thing about this testimony is that it shows others
your real concern. Two college students roomed together
for three years. For some reason they roomed apart their
senior year, but were fast friends. John was a Christian;
Charles was not. John had often meant to ask Charles to
become a Christian, but could not get it done. One day after
class as they came down the walk together John determined
he would say a word. Just as they parted he said : "Char-
lie, it almost breaks my heart that you are not a Christian."
Charles went home, threw himself on his knees, and gave his
life to God. Afterwards he said : "When I knew that John
cared so much, I couldn't stand it. It was time for m£ to
get right." Do we care enough to really win men ?
196 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE,
STUDY XII. TESTIMONY AND THE EXTENSION
OF THE KINGDOM.
"And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, Ye men
of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are very religious. For
as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found
also an altar with this inscription, To an Unknown God. What
therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you." (Acts
xvii. 22, 23.)
PART V. HOW TO HELP THOSE IN DOUBT.
In attempting to help those whose faith is unsettled it is
essential that we should have a clear conception as to the
particular form of their difficulty. Infidelity, that form of
unbelief which carries with it the implication of loose mor-
als, is not prevalent in our day. Men are not proud and
blatant in their lack of faith. It cannot be denied that some
who discard Christianity are immoral in conduct, neither
can it be doubted that immorality tends to superinduce
doubt; but it is distinctly unfair to infer from these two
statements that those who are in doubt are immoral.
Agnosticism, which claims that I not only do not know
God, but that it is impossible to know God, is not such a
frequent form of doubt as it formerly was. Men are begin-
ning to see that if we cannot rely on our natures to give us
truth about the supersensible world, then we are not sure of
any true basis for any form of knowledge.
Atheism, the denial of God, is not prevalent in our time.
Men accept some kind of a supreme power, though they
would not define this power as closely as the Christian de-
fines God. The present form of unrest is that of imperson-
alistic, even pantheistic, tendencies. Men say that God can
hardly be personal, but that he is everywhere about in the
form of impersonal influence. He is force, law, order, and
what not.
Still others have no definite form of doubt. They simply
do not know. They are groping for the light. For the most
part, they are reverent searchers for the truth. They have
the attitude expressed by Tennyson's "In Memoriam" :
TESTIMONY AND EXTENSION OF KINGDOM. 197
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
What, then, shall be our attitude toward such persons?
First of all, it should be one of sympathy and understanding.
It was said of Christ that he would not break a bruised reed,
and he would not quench the smoking flax. He was never
harsh with honest doubt. He was harsh only with hypocrisy,
which often took the form of pious belief without pious ac-
tions. Many are the men who have been driven away from
Christianity because of the intolerant attitude of those who
claimed to be Christians. It is not necessarily a sign of sin
nor a sign of weakness that a person is plunged into doubt.
Of course it may be a sign of either or of both, but in most
cases this is not true. We must, therefore, have the attitude
of confidence and trust.
You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies.
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not : one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed.
Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true :
Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds.
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt.
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the Specters of the mind
And laid them. — Tennyson's ''In Memoriam"
jqS christian life— a normal experience.
STUDY XII. TESTIMONY AND THE EXTENSION
OF THE KINGDOM.
"And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and wherefore do
questionings arise in your heart? See my hands and my feet, that it
is I myself : handle me, and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones,
as ye behold me having. And when he had said this, he showed
them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for
joy, and wondered, he said unto them. Have ye here anything to eat?
And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish. And he took it, and ate
before them. And he said unto them, These are my words which I
spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs
be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets,
and the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their mind, that
they might understand the scriptures." (Luke xxiv. 38-45.)
PART VI. HOW TO HELP THOSE IN DOUBT.
(Continued.)
Further, we must force those in doubt to get on posi-
tive ground. Ask them to speak out everything they do not
believe, then ask them to say one thing they do believe.
Do not argue, but show the growing implications in the
things which they positively believe.
Recently a graduate student came to me primed for a
great argument. He blurted out that he did not accept
Christ as divine, that he did not believe in the Bible as au-
thoritative, and that he did not believe in God as personal.
I let him talk, and finally I asked him if there was any one
thing that he did believe. This scared him. He was amazed
to think that he had gone so far. I asked him if he accepted
righteousness as the law of largest life. He said that he did.
I asked him where we had the finest embodiment of right-
eousness. He was forced to say in the person of Christ,
although he said he was not sure that there was such a
person. I told him not to mind about whether there was
such a person as Christ or not. He accepted the picture
of the Gospels as the world's best representative. Then I
said: "If righteousness is the law of highest life and the
best presentation of righteousness we have is in the gospel
picture of Christ, you must, if you are honest, espouse the
cause of the gospel righteousness, you must live it to the
TESTIMONY AND EXTENSION OF KINGDOM. 199
limit, and you must urge others to live it until you can find
something better. We are obligated to live the best we
know."
I further told him that if he was honest he must find some
reasonable explanation of why these early fishermen had
been able to draw a portrait of the highest righteousness that
the world knows. Of course there is but one reasonable
explanation, and that is the fact that they had a living pic-
ture before them. They were writing about a real life. The
main point was that I forced him onto positive ground. I
would not allow him to keep me constantly on the defensive.
I would not argue, but I insisted on making him think clearly
and conclusively.
Honesty demands two things : First, that one will search
for truth with all diligence. Secondly, that one will follow
the truth to the limit when it is found. If one will be ab-
solutely honest with himself and with the truth, I have no
fear for the outcome. God can take care of his own cause
if men will give him a chance. It is my business to get men
to give him a chance.
Be near me when my light is low,
When_ the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle, and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when my faith is dry.
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing,
And weave their petty cells and die.
■ — Tennyson's "In Memoriam."
200 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE.
STUDY XII. TESTIMONY AND THE EXTENSION
OF THE KINGDOM.
''Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall
find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and
make them sit down to meat, and shall come and serve them. And
if he shall come in the second watch, and if in the third, and find
them so, blessed are those servants. But know this, that if the
master of the house had known in what hour the thief was coming,
he would have watched, and not have left his house to be broken
through. Be ye also ready : for in an hour that ye think not the Son
of man cometh." (Luke xii. 37-40.)
PART VII. AROUSING THE INDIFFERENT.
Indifference may be traced to a number of causes.
First, a man may be indifferent because he has lost faith in
the old forms of worship or in the statement of creeds. In
that case he must be dealt with in accordance with the last
section. Others are indifferent because they undervalue
religion. They do not see that it really gets them anywhere.
They do not feel that they need it. Still others are indiffer-
ent because they are so preoccupied with other affairs — ^busi-
ness, pleasure, study, athletics — that religious interest has
died from disuse. Traced to its ultimate meaning, this is a
phase of the preceding difficulty; they really do not think
religion counts. But its origin lies in a preoccupied life.
Lastly, there are those who assume a forced indifference.
There are practices in their lives incompatible with religious
faith, and hence they dare not face God. Every personal
worker has found many belonging to each class. What can
be done for them ?
Perhaps not first in practice, but at least first in logical
procedure, one should make clear to these persons that life
is determined by the things to which they give attention.
To neglect any great field of values means to shut them out
of the life permanently. We do not have to deny them;
we only need neglect them. The classic illustration is Dar-
win, who lost all love for music, poetry, and art by concen-
trating on science for years to the utter exclusion of these
other phases of life.
When we neglect religion, we not only lose interest in it,
but our capacity for religion atrophies, which is far more
serious. We not only fail to see; but, like the fish in the
TESTIMONY AND EXTENSION OF KINGDOM. 201
Mammoth Cave, we lose our organs of sight by long disuse.
This should be made clear to the indifferent.
Secondly, it would be well to show the indifferent one that
religion is a personal relationship and necessary for all per-
sonal and social growth. He who will not give proper place
to other persons in his life is cutting himself off from all
growth and is robbing society of all the values which his
character should add to human advancement. He is essen-
tially antisocial. This will often arouse the indifferent.
Lastly, but perhaps first in practice, the great means of
arousing the indifferent is to bring them in touch with a
genuine and attractive Christian personality. One of the
best words of psychology and sociology during the last dec-
ade is this : Character is not taught ; character is caught.
Coleridge said that the secret of his life lay in the fact that
he had a friend. "A friend," said Emerson, "is to make us
do what we can."
An uncle of Maltbie Babcock wanted the boy to be a
minister. He invited his nephew and one of the choicest
ministerial students at Princeton to spend a holiday vaca-
tion together on his farm, and Babcock went away thinking
of the ministry as a life work.
One of the strongest students that ever went through
Vanderbilt University went to the student conference at
the end of his senior year and decided to study for the min-
istry. He told me afterwards that he would have made that
decision years before had he been thrown with such a whole-
some set of men. He saw the manliness and worth of reli-
gious students as he had never seen it before and as he could
never see it in any single institution of the land. He spent
ten days with the choicest Christian spirits from all the
Southern colleges, and he went away with a new interest
and a new life. Put your indifferent person into the pres-
ence of some wholesome, enthusiastic Christian life, and
transformation must follow.
Let me live in a house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by —
The men that are good, and the men that are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner's seat,
Nor hurl the cinic's ban;
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.
— Foss's "TJie^ House by the Side of the Road"
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The following volumes have been carefully reviewed and are here
listed as a guide to those who would like to pursue further the
studies suggested by this book. Those titles that are starred will be
valuable to mature students only.
I. Books on Apologetics.
Clarke, William Newton. — "The Christian Doctrine of God," "The
Ideal of Jesus," "Sixty Years with the Bible." (Scribner's.)
^Eucken, Rudolph. — "The Truth of Religion." (Putnam's.)
Fosdick, Harry Emerson. — "The Assurance of Immortality."
(Macmillan.)
Illingworth, J. R. — "Personality, Human and Divine." (Macmil-
lan.)
Knox, George William. — "The Direct and Fundamental Proofs of
the Christian Religion." (Scribner's.)
Mackintosh, H. R. — "The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ."
(Scribner's.)
Watson, John. — "God's Message to the Human Soul." (Revell.)
II. Books on the Psychology of Religion,
*Ames, Edward Scrihner. — "The Psychology of Religious Experi-
ence." (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)
Tailing, Marshall P. — "The Science of Spiritual Life." (Revell.)
*James, William. — "The Varieties of Religious Experience."
(Longmans, Green & Co.)
King, Henry Churchill. — "The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual
Life," "The Laws of Friendship," "Rational Living." (Macmillan.)
Pratt, James Bissett. — "The Psychology of Religious Belief."
(Macmillan.)
*Starbuck, Edwin Diller. — "The Psychology of Religion."
(Scribner's.)
Steven, George. — "The Psychology of the Christian Soul." (Hod-
der & Stoughton.)
*Stratton, George Malcolm. — "Psychology of the Religious Life."
(George Allen & Co.)
(205)
2o6 CHRISTIAN LIFE— A NORMAL EXPERIENCE
III. Books on Comparative Religions.
* Bliss, Frederick Jones. — "The Religions of Modern Syria and
Palestine." (Scribner's.)
Davids, Rhys. — "Buddhism: Its History and Literature." (Put-
nam's.)
Douglas, Robert K. — "Confucianism and Taoism." Non-Christian
Religious Systems Series.
"^Deiissen, Paul. — "The Philosophy of the Upanishads," (T. and
T. Clark.)
Jevons, Frank Byron. — "An Introduction to the History of Reli-
gion." (Mathew & Co.)
Slater, T. E. — "The Higher Hinduism in Relation to Christianity."
(Elliott Stock.)
*Tiele, C. P. — "Elements of the Science of Religion," Volumes I.
and II. (William Blackwood & Sons.)
IV. Books on Personal Work.
Johnson, Howard Agnew. — "Studies in God's Method of Training
Workers." (Association Press.)
Sanford, S. M. — "Personal Work." (Association Press.)
Stone, John Timothy. — "Recruiting for Christ." (Revell.)
Trumbull, Charles Gallaudet. — "Taking Men Alive." (Associa-
tion Press.)
Trumbull, H. Clay. — "Individual Work for Individuals." (Asso-
ciation Press.)
Weatherford, W. D.— "Introducing Men to Christ." (Smith &
Lamar.)
Wood, H. Wellington. — "Winning Men One by One." (Sunday
School Times Company.)
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